November 16th
by Pessimystic
Summary: Just as Chris was daring to think his birthday wasn't as cursed as he previously believed, he turned 23. Joy.
1. Intuition

All sections are in the changed timeline unless otherwise stated.

**Chapter One: Intuition**

** November 16th, 2013. 8:00**

Burying the warding crystals around the school had certainly seemed like a good idea at the time.

The sisters had set had been spoiled by the absolute safety of Magic School and they set out to combine that safety with the normality of a mortal school. Exhaustive researching into the pros and cons of various spells, wards, and other magical shenanigans had lead them to the least risky option. Pre-enchanted warding crystals. Harmless to mortals, while keeping those pesky demons at bay, and, once installed were difficult for mortals to accidentally tamper with. The only risk being that, in said installation, the Halliwells gained a reputation for burying shiny rocks on school grounds at odd hours of the night.

These things were so powerful they'd peel the skin off a demon at fifty paces, and, after a few demons got cocky enough to test it for them, the sisters considered it a job well done. They patted each other on the backs, and allowed themselves to relax.

This was a stupid idea. You'd think after all these years they'd have figured out the personal gain rule.

Not long after, some Warlock figured out their trick, and switched the ward's polarity. Now anything good couldn't get in... or out, as the situation currently happened to be.

Now, as he wedged himself under Principal Yoder's desk, nine-year-old Christopher Halliwell couldn't help but develop a quick, all-encompassing hatred for magical stones of any kind. Scrying? Never again. Crystal cages, no way. He could only hope there were no spells in the Book that required dust of warding stones because even that would be too much. Right then, all he really wanted to do was think of horrible places to orb warding crystals just as soon as he got out... that is, _if_ he got out.

He supposed he should just be glad that the ward hadn't stopped any of the mortals from getting out. He just wished Wyatt was in there with him. He imagined this scenario going drastically more in his favor then.

"...Happy birthday to you...Happy birthday to yoou..."

The voice echoed down the empty hallways and Chris covered his ears stubbornly. It was the demon. He didn't know how the thing had found out it was his birthday, but he'd been singing it ever since, and off-key to boot.

"Happy biiiiirthday dear Wit-chyyy..." The demon's voice reached a particularly sharp grating note just as he poked his alarmingly purple face into the room.

Chris gulped down his fear and froze, fear taking over. All he could to was try not to rattle the cheap imitation plywood desk with the shaking in his arms. He squeezed his eyes shut and breathed, scrambling to remember exactly how his brother would handle this. First, He hadn't had a chance to look at the demon until now, and he needed to know what he was dealing with. He focused, leaned, and ever so slightly, peered out through a small gap in the desk.

The demon was oddly proportioned and disturbingly purple. The way his face was arranged left him looking perpetually happy, his mouth cutting a line literally from ear to ear, thick with needle teeth. Sharp, bone white horns grew out from its temples, sticking close to his head and curling around to join at the back of his neck. Its whole body was thick with sinuous muscle and spiked with bone claws, it was a regular nightmare under the bed, everything a kid should be scared of.

Despite the advantage of prior experience, Chris shouldn't any exception. He'd never had to face one of these things solo before, especially not for extended periods of time. Yet even as he listened to the demon's feet squishing grotesquely against the tile, nails clicking right after like a tiny macabre drumline, Chris realized something. He was inexperienced, nearly powerless, and all alone. He should be_ terrified_.

...and he wasn't. He was just utterly pissed off.

It was the familiarity, Chris pinpointed. Hovering at the back of his mind like an annoying tune you couldn't put a name to. He'd felt the sensation before. Wyatt called it his "Intuition" and experience had taught the both of them not to question it.

Chris peeked out from under the desk again, getting a letterbox view of the demon's legs, backwards hinged and meaty. A large, yellow scar traced down the back of the thing's leg like a zipper. It was an old wound, expertly placed to cut all three of the tendons along the multi-jointed leg.

Chris had to stop himself from audibly gasping as the pinprick of light that was his Intuition brightened and expanded.

…_."You sent me into a trap, Dax. That's a hell of a big problem. I don't have time to deal with this. I'm going ask nicely one more time, and you're going to answer me truthfully if you feel like walking again..."..._

He _knew_ this demon...

Not just in a general way though. He knew his powers, his preferred prey, he knew where he hung out, who his allies were... he could even recall his favorite alcoholic beverage, whatever the heck a Mojito was.

Most importantly, he knew how to vanquish him.

"Birthday boy!" The demon cheerfully crooned, slamming its claws down on the desk as if it were a drum set, "You have to come out so I can use you as bait! Doesn't that sound nice?"

In a rush of confidence, Chris pulled himself from behind the desk, finding himself close enough to the demon's face to count the teeth in his smile. He smiled right back, displaying his own canines in a grin no nine year old should ever be capable of.

"Hey Dax. How's the leg?"

He had a moment to see the closest approximation of shock on a demon's face before he grabbed a stapler off the desk and slammed the business end right into his nose. He didn't wait to hear the thing howl in annoyance, orbing even as he turned to run. He coalesced back down the hallway, the ward keeping his range short, breaking into a run as soon as he had feet to do it with. The demon was fast. He could practically feel the thing's breath on his neck and knew he was running out of time. Chris careened down the hallway and orbed through the first locked door he could find.

He heard Dax hit the door behind him, the steel door straining against the frame, but he didn't stop. Chris used the time he'd gained to scramble to the back of the room and into the janitor's closet, pulling open toolboxes and hoping that everything in here was just as old as the rest of the school.

Dax shouldered the door again, and again, until the door gave away at the hinges, the frame itself loose from the mortar around it.

"_**You.**_" The demon hissed as soon as it caught up with him, murder in its black eyes. "It is not possible."

Chris ignored the comments, not in any mood to decode the ramblings of an insane demon and clawed open the hatch on the last box on the shelf, grinning.

The Dax snapped its teeth, "It matters not. You are smaller now. Easier to kill."

How does one kill a Dax? Iron.

"Wrench!" Chris commanded, throwing his hands up in the direction of the demon, orbing one of the old rusted tools out of the box. The orbs traced a light into the demon's chest and solidified, making a horrible squelching sound as it did.

The Dax had barely a second to realize what happened before it burst into flames and disintegrated, taking the wards with it.

"So long, Dax." Chris said, all of a sudden tired.

He let out a breath and sunk down to the floor. It only took a moment for the room to brighten with blue and white orbs not his own, depositing three angry looking mothers into the tiny closet. It took them a moment to realize that they were standing in the demon's ashes before they turned to look at him.

Chris just shrugged and closed his eyes.

"Birthdays suck."

**November 16th, 2027. 6:00 am.**

Wyatt Matthew Halliwell didn't particularly like torturing his brother. The fact that he did it so often anyway had less to do with him actually _wanting_ to drive the younger Witchlighter to distraction and more with the fact that Chris desperately needed to be taught a lesson. He was sure his brother could appreciate that on some level and, knowing that, he hoped Chris would one day forgive him.

Ever so quietly, he snuck up on the sleeping prey. He was stretched out on the couch per usual, having passed out there with some ridiculously complicated looking book opened on his stomach. Wyatt leaned over the back of the couch, getting as close as he dared and then, just as the moment was right, he screamed.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!"

... and immediately staggered back as a blunt force to his solar plexus sent all of the air rushing out of his lungs. A lifetime of training the only thing keeping him standing. The Twice-Blessed doubled over and took a moment to wheeze, drawing a hasty breath before he looked back over at the couch.

All he could see over the top of the couch was his brother's hand, still poised from the telekinetic attack. Chris drug himself up, his sleep mussed condition doing nothing to soften the glare he was sending at his brother.

"Wyatt..." He glowered, looking positively murderous, "I swear to god, if you weren't my brother..."

Wyatt pulled himself up and grinned in spite of it, flicking a his hand behind his back subtly. Suddenly the whole glare-that-could-kill thing seemed a whole lot less threatening as a pink birthday hat orbed on the top of Chris's head.

"Good thing I'm your brother then, right? Otherwise I'd be drawn, quartered, hanging off a flagpole, blah, blah. Great hat by the way." Wyatt gave a brilliant display of teeth before ducking down and out of Chris's immediate range. The hat hit him square in the face anyway. Damn telekinesis. He decided to make his exit. In his experience the first object was followed by a much heavier one.

Chris rolled his eyes, watching his brother try to quickly escape into the apartment's small kitchen. He eyed the book in his lap briefly, trying to decide if it would be too childish to hit him with that as well. He flipped it over, holding the page with a finger. 'A Brief Summary of Quantum Mechanics and the Relationship of Matter.'

He snorted lightly. Yeah, way too smart of a book to waste on Wyatt. Plus, somewhere along the line, he had gotten the reputation of being the most mature in the next generation of Halliwells and he didn't feel like spoiling that now.

He caught the edges of a few blue orbs and reached up in time to keep the party hat from rematerializing onto his head.

Wyatt, apparently, had no such hangups.

Chris held it out in front of him like it was a vat of demon spleens, noting from the corner of his eye that Wyatt had peeked around into the room just to see the reaction.

"Come on!" He called, "You can't really still think your birthday is evil!"

"Sure I can," Chris answered flatly before happily orbing the hat into the municipal garbage dump and attempting to go about his day. He rolled off the couch, pulling at his shirt as he went, realizing he'd fallen asleep in yesterday's clothes... again. His mother would not approve.

"Besides," He dropped the edges of his shirt with a shrug, "I don't really think it's _evil._"

Wyatt perked up, "Really?"

"It's not evil, it's just cursed. Difference."

"Oh, for the love of... _Chris_!"

The younger Halliwell ignored him and crossed the small living room to his bedroom, letting the sound of the door slamming behind him be the only answer Wyatt would get.

"Yeah, that's mature." Wyatt's muffled voice added glumly, making Chris smile in spite of himself. Wyatt was right, he did somewhat understand, and _perhaps_ on a _really_ good day, appreciate the gesture, but there wasn't anything to be done for it. He'd accepted a long time ago that his birthdays just went... bad. He had no idea why his family had such a hard time doing the same.

Chris sighed and looked over at the closed door one more time. No doubt Wyatt was in the other room calling reinforcements. Chris knew the routine well and, like every year before this, he'd just have to suffer through it. He'd turned back to his room, hoping to prepare the best he could.

A wave of drowsiness washed over him abruptly as his bed came into view. The piece of furniture was practically begging him to catch up on the sleep he'd missed in the past week. He sighed and bypassed the idea, heading to get ready for the day. His family was bound and determined to drag him out into the world today, show him that it was possible to have a nice, catastrophe free birthday, hell or high water.

...Well, come to think of it hell _and_ high water had happened already (birthdays 6 and 13 to be precise). He'd have to think of a better metaphor.

Grudgingly, he moved over to his closet and pulled out some clothes at random, knowing Wyatt would only give him a few minutes before he orbed the door off its hinges. No way was Wyatt letting him off as easy as a party hat and a wakeup call. He had other things planned...

No sooner had he tugged a fresh shirt over his head when one of those plans reared its ugly head.

"Wyatt..." Chris called, magicking his door open with a glare.

The blond man peered around the door frame, smiling, "Yes?"

"Why is my phone singing Happy Birthday?"

**6:30 am.**

Piper Halliwell hung up the phone with an inwardly satisfied smile, not disturbed in the slightest when Chris didn't pick it up. Knowing him, he'd probably orbed it out the window again, it was why he never got the nice phones.

Strictly speaking, the family didn't need cells anyway. With so much whitelighter blood in the mix they practically had a network going all of their own. The only thing that kept the little contraptions around was the fact that they were dead set on fitting into the mortal world. Yelling at the skies to communicate tended to make one look a bit crazy.

"Oo, Waffles," Leo leaned around his wife, grabbing the plates of food to set on the table. Piper squinted at him and brandished a finger.

"Don't touch those until the boys get here." She warned in her, 'I-mean-it-buster' voice.

Leo chuckled, "You mean Wyatt's actually trying to drag him out of the house?"

"Drag being the word," Piper rolled her eyes and and tipped her head back, shouting at the ceiling, "Chris, Wyatt. Stop fighting and come get breakfast!"

Piper tried not to look too pleased with herself as a blue glow obediently filled the kitchen, forming into her two eldest. Chris knocked his elbow into Wyatt's side bitterly, forcing him to unloop his arm around Chris's neck.

"Good morning boys," Piper smiled widely and stood on her toes to give each of them a peck on the cheek, "Happy birthday sweetie."

Chris mostly hid his wince, bit off a thanks, and tried to duck any similar comments by helping set the table. As concentrated he was at that task, he didn't miss the nudge and look Wyatt gave their parents, pointing at him and swirling a finger around his ear.

Piper swatted Wyatt before turning to send a exasperated look at her other son, "Still? Really?" Wyatt just heaved a shrug.

The Charmed One sighed forcefully and leaned around her eldest, "Peanut, there's nothing to be worried about, really."

"If you say so..." Chris said noncommittally, pointedly not looking at them.

"Your mother's right," Leo chipped in, "Nothing has happened in _years._"

Chris was infinitely happy that his back was turned as he'd never been able to hide his guilt. He'd been convinced for years that Piper had some kind of scary witch sixth sense for lying. He was a fantastic liar normally but he could very rarely slip something past her.

He hoped this was one of those times. After all, technically he hadn't lied about the last three years... he'd just... omitted... a lot.

He chanced a look over his shoulder and saw that she'd paused in setting the table, eyes narrowed, head titled slightly to the side. Oh yeah, she was catching on.

"Brothers dearest!"

Chris let out his breath. Saved by the sister.

Melinda Halliwell, resplendent in purple pajamas, swept into the room like a queen in her very own castle. Of course that's how she walked _everywhere_. She flashed a smile at them and jumped up on her tiptoes to peck Wyatt on the cheek.

He waited patiently until she was on solid footing before mussing up her light brown hair even more that it already was. "Are there any ex-boyfriends I have to beat up today?"

"Meh," Melinda made a show of considering, "Try back next week, we'll see how this one lasts." She turned to Chris and gave him a once-over, eyebrow crooking up immediately.

"Oho! _Someone_ woke up on the wrong side of the couch this morning," Mel sidled up next to him, bumping him conspiratorially with her elbow, the height difference meaning she got him right in his side. Chris wondered, again, why his siblings liked to beat him up so often. It was even more infuriating with Mel because (being the gentleman he was) he'd never be able to hit her back.

Of course, Mel knew this and used it to her full advantage, conniving person that** she** was.

"Oo! Dad, look! Waffles!" Thankfully, she was also easily distracted.

**8:00 am.**

"So," Melinda asked innocently, swirling her pen around in her fingers, "How's it feel to be 23 and independent? Good? Bad? Awesome?"

Chris eyed his little sister like one would look at a lion cub.

He turned back to doing the breakfast dishes, pretending like he was considering the question, "Hm, it feels exactly like being 22 and independent but one day older. Go figure."

Mel tapped at the textbook in her lap irritably, "Sure seems nice to be out there in the world..._outside of the Manor..._" She leaned in her chair to emphasize the words.

"I'm not convincing them to let you move out."

The younger Halliwell crumpled in her seat, preparing an epic pout, "Oh come on!" She practically pounced out of the kitchen chair holding her French textbook in front of her like a bludgeoning shield. "Why are you so mean to me?"

Chris just gave her a look that was purely Piper before dropping the last dish into the drying rack.

Mel changed tactics and latched onto his arm, widening her green eyes and batting her eyelashes like a proper damsel, "Please-oh-please! Pretty please with sugar plums and hot fudge and marshmallows-."

"No."

"Why?" She huffed, letting him go, "You and Wyatt got to move out _years_ ago. I'm 19 Chris, they're stifling me! I need to be out there where I can actually _live_."

Chris turned the water off and sighed. He knew how she felt. In some ways she was more grown up than any of them. She balanced her witch and mortal duties easily, had been in college a year, had a decent savings, and knew exactly what she was doing with her life. That last one alone topped him and Wyatt in a heartbeat. It was a bit cruel to keep her locked up in her childhood room, staring at the severely outdated pink teddy bear runners on her walls.

"We offered to let you move in with us last year." He said halfheartedly. She only rolled her eyes in return.

"That'd be even worse than here. You guys are like a second set of parents. Wyatt freaks out any time I try to dress in something that doesn't cover me from knees to neck." She groaned in frustration, "This isn't fair. Just because you're not powerful enough to live on your own-" Her whole body froze and she looked at him, wide eyed, hand popped up to cover her mouth.

"Oh my gosh, I didn't mean that." She gasped and threw her hands out theatrically, wrists up, "Vanquish me now, really. I mean it." She winced, waiting for his response.

Chris pushed the annoyance into a corner. His lack of power was something he'd always been a little sore about, but he'd had years to come to terms. Didn't mean he didn't want to get her back though... He looked over at her and smirked, "Said the girl who can't orb."

The tension eased out of her shoulders and a half smirk came onto her face, "Says you." She wiggled her fingers in a small wave and a blue light overtook her body, orbs whisking her up and through the ceiling... and then she just popped back to where she was standing, looking smug as ever.

Unfortunately for Melinda, she'd been born after their father had gotten his own mortality. Technically she was still a witchlighter, but the dormant whitelighter genes were nearly impossible to coax out. Powers wise, she was the most vulnerable of the three, but she was too stubborn to let that remain the case.

The one power she did have she used to perfection, making her a very dangerous illusionist. She could make a blind man see, if it suited her. Still, it wasn't enough for their parents who were insisting on the magical buddy system. As much as he understood Mel's point of view, he sympathized with his parents' more. Better a stifled sister than a dead one.

"You can't illusion yourself an offensive power, Mel," Chris poked her in the shoulder, "You can still be hurt."

"Point is that the _demons_ don't know I can't orb." She shrugged, "I'd just fake the orb, pull an invisible woman, and bravely hide in the closet. I'd be fine."

She frowned when her brother made no moves to answer her. He just gave her an apologetic smile and moved off into the dining room.

"Besides," She pitched in, halfheartedly, "I have two ridiculously awesome brothers who can swoop in to save me."

Chris barely heard her, too busy with the sudden dark _pressure_ he felt. The world faded momentarily and he blinked sightlessly, almost forgetting to breathe in as a sudden overbearing feeling overtook him. He couldn't identify it as it seeped into his skin and then, just as it reached his heart, it dawned on him.

Complete. Utter. Hopelessness.

"Chris!"

He sucked in a breath and staggered back shortly, only standing straight because of the hands on his arms. He blinked and focused on Melinda, her nearly identical green eyes staring at him widely.

"Chris," Melinda breathed, paler than usual, "Are you all right? You're...cold."

Was he alright? He wasn't entirely sure... He shook himself out of it, shutting his eyes briefly to find his balance before answering, "Yeah..." He said even as he put his palm over his heart to check if it was still beating.

"... the hell was that?" Melinda pressed, noticing the movement.

"Nothing," He said with more conviction than last time, "I'm fine." He stepped out of her grip and gave her a smile. "Really."

Melinda squinted at him, suspicious, but for once she didn't have a comment to add.

Chris looked down at his watch and winced slightly, "Ah, yeah, I gotta go make an appearance at Magic school." He stepped around her and deliberately ruffled her hair, "I'll see you at dinner tonight, alright?"

Chris disappeared in the shine of the bright blue orbs, leaving an uneasy looking Melinda standing alone in the Manor.

A/N:: Take two on this fic. For those that don't know I moved this fic to a new account here and am reposting it little by little. As soon as it's all up here (and edited), I'll be deleting my other account and start posting new chapters here. Yet again, thank you all for your patience.

As always, Reviews are win in a can and keep the creative wheels greased.


	2. Blood in the Library

All sections are in the changed timeline unless otherwise stated.

**Chapter Two: Blood in the Library.  
**

**November 16th, 2020. 6:00**

This was not where he was supposed to be. Today was his 16th birthday. He was supposed to be doing many things. Having cake with his family, for one. Or desperately dodging his various temporarily resurrected relatives whose only mission in death seemed to be to asking awkward questions about girlfriends. At this point, he'd settle for standing in a DMV line even though the idea of having a license meant nil to someone who merely had to think it and they could be halfway across the world. Point was, Chris would rather be doing any of those things. _Any_. Instead, where was he now?

In jail. _Grand._

Chris blew his bangs out of his eyes irritably and cast another look around the room for the millionth time. He looked from the handcuffs chaining him to metal table before casting around to look for a clock even though he knew the room didn't have one. It was less to actually know the time (he knew that perfectly well as he had a near freakishly correct inner clock) as it was more of an avoidance tactic. Anything to keep him from staring dumbly at the wrinkled detective sitting across from him. A detective, he should mention, who'd done nothing but glare at Chris quizzically for the last couple hours.

The man seemed to have this idea that Chris had committed some sort of heinous crime or another, not that he'd deigned to explain what exactly that crime was. Chris had tried to start up a conversation in a number of varying ways, each one growing less and less polite, but the cop didn't speak. At least not beyond a few basic paperwork questions that Chris carefully answered before the man switched back to staring at him with glazed over eyes.

It was infuriating.

Usually, Chris wasn't usually an easy person to rattle, but in a way more obviously genetic than learned, he was more than a bit of a control freak. He liked things to go as he planned them to be. When they didn't, he got agitated. He could deal with it usually. He'd typically just have to go make a work around and the world would be golden. Of course when that failed he got... neurotic.

The detective seemed to know that there was no way to more effectively take away a person's sense of control than lock them to a table for no conceivable reason and stare at them like a circus sideshow. Frankly it was a credit to his patience that Chris had lasted _this _long. He'd held on simply because he didn't want to give the guy any reason to ransack the Manor. There were lots of things in that place that would be very, very awkward to explain. However, he only had so much patience...

And dammit! The man would not. Stop. Staring at him.

"Would you _stop that." _Chris bit out the words even before he'd made the decision to say them.

The cop's wrinkled forehead shrunk into itself, giving him an unfortunate resemblance to a badly groomed pug. He kept staring. The man was _damaged. _Chris twisted his hands in the cuffs and let out a shaking sigh, trying to distract himself from the urge to orb out of the damn things. That would crack magic open quite nicely, especially with that handy camera up in the corner.

Instead, Chris cast his glare upwards, staring through the foam ceiling tiles and up into Elderland, deciding that it was safe to at least be mad at _them._ They probably had something to do with this. They'd been less than charitable ever since Chris had turned down a charge a few months prior. It'd taken a patented Piper death glare to get them to back down. Maybe this was some kind of childish elder retribution. He wouldn't be surprised.

"Talking to God?" The detective finally spoke, voice gruff and seemingly out of place after so much silence.

"Oh, so you're speaking now?" Chris snarked, his brain to mouth filter dangerously eroded, "I wasn't talking to god. Just some people who think they are."

The older man opened his mouth like a fish then closed it, scratching at his receding hairline and casting around uselessly while he tried to process that information. Chris couldn't even stir up the will to guess what that conclusion was, just as long as it wasn't related to a straight jacket.

"Now, what did you say your name was again?" The detective looked up from the papers again, visibly concentrating as if Chris were going to attempt to trick him. For a second, he entertained the idea of doing so, before his mind snapped back to the straight jacket and a search warrant with the Manor's address on it. Instead, he just settled for an martyred sigh.

"Christopher. Perry. Halliwell."

The man squinted, "Not a junior?"

"No!"

"Then what's your dad's name?"

"You know who he is." Chris didn't roll his eyes, he rolled his whole head, "Leo Wyatt? The guy standing out there in the waiting room yelling at your boss and getting you fired." Chris rolled his eyes. Leo and the family had kept them updated on their efforts over the whitelighter link. So far the police had stonewalled them almost entirely but it didn't hurt to put a little fear in the detective.

The detective tapped on the desk, "You sure he's your real dad?"

"_Yes." _

The silence dragged, "You got an older twin or something?"

Chris attempted to toss his hands in the air in frustration only to be tugged down again by the handcuffs. "For the love of... _No!_ That isn't even _possible._" He nearly growled, "Look, I don't know what damage you have, and I'm not sure what you have against me, but you've _got_ to get over it. You can't just come to my school, in the middle of class, and _arrest _me with absolutely no explanation. The least you could do for me is give me a reason."

The detective's expression went from confused to annoyed, "We've got every right to ask you questions, kid. Have a little respect for the badge and cooperate."

"I had a 'little respect' when I got here _eight freaking hours ago!_ Excuse me if I'm running low on it now. Besides, I haven't lost my respect for _the_ badge, I've lost my respect for _your_ badge." Chris was growling now, barely resisting the urge to orb, if only just to go look up his rights. He knew there were laws against this somewhere. He should have a guardian in here with him at least.

"Just-" Chris took a calming breath, "tell me what the charges are."

The Detective looked him up and down cautiously before attempting to speak, "Okay then, you're here on charges of impersonating a minor, resisting and evading arrest, escaping from prison, and assault on one Sergeant Morris..." The man's eyes slid to the left and he mumbled another sentence too low to hear, and Chris wasn't going to let him get away with that.

"What was that last part?" He pressed.

The officer refused to look at him, "... seventeen years ago."

"You've got to be kidding," Chris stared in wonder at the collective stupidity, "I wasn't even _conceived_ yet."

"So you say..." The Detective said dramatically, "Your prints match perfectly to our records."

The teenager scoffed, "Then your records are crap. This is insane."

A sharp knock broke off whatever incredibly witty retort the detective was conjuring up and Henry Mitchell poked his head in the room, making a small calming gesture at Chris before stepping in.

"Detective?" Henry tapped the man on the shoulder and gestured at the phone in his hand, "We have Darryl Morris on the line. We sent him those pictures and he wants to speak with you."

The Detective crooked an eyebrow but took the phone nonetheless.

"Ah, Sergeant M- I mean Chief, apologies. We were just hoping you could just confirm the identity- Well, no." The Detective's confidence visibly slid away, inch by inch as the voice on the other side of the phone spoke. A steady minute passed by until the detective's face was a nice shade of red.

Chris waited until he was fully absorbed with the phone call before looking up at Henry with raised eyebrows. His uncle just smiled smugly to himself.

"No, well, yes. Yes I am aware of how aging works. No, you're right people do not age backwards... I-I do understand... No sir, I am not an idiot... Yes I do like my badge. There's no need to call my superiors. Yes. Y-...You want to what?" The Detectives face crumpled into near fear, then back to the typical confusion before he held out the phone to Chris. "He wants to speak with you..."

Chris tossed another look at Henry, and with his silent nod, he twisted his hands inside of the cuffs and took the phone. "Uh, Hello?"

"Sorry about that," The voice said easily. It was deep and kind voice, one that struck a sense of familiarity in him.

"No problem... I guess." Chris responded feeling slightly out of his depth.

"They've been told to let you go. Sorry it took so long," Daryl chuckled lightly before he sighed, "Tell your parents and aunts hello and... I'm sorry, for, you know, _everything_. Any time they're in my neck of the woods, they're welcome to stop by. Sheila misses them."

Chris let the words sink in, face softening. The man sounded tired and...sad perhaps. "Sure," He answered eventually before continuing hesitantly, "So... do I _want_ to know how this happened?"

"Oh _hell_ no." Daryl laughed outright, "Still gives me a headache sometimes!"

Chris couldn't help but smile, if just a bit, "Noted. Thanks." Better just to write this off as some kind of spell gone terribly, _terribly_ wrong.

"Anytime.. and I mean that this time. Oh, and Chris? Happy Birthday."

**November 16th, 2027. 9:30 am.**

Chris had discovered a long time ago that he was particularly adept at pretending to read. What was sad was that he had to do it so often, just for a moment of peace. He loved every member of his family dearly... all 14 of them. As a whole, though, they were all nosy, loud, and collectively ignorant of the concept of alone time. Thus, he'd practically carved out a corner of the library for himself just for such times that his family was being inquisitive. He'd long since learned that nothing quite deflected inquiring minds quite like a glaring librarian.

All he needed today was just an hour to collect his thoughts and steel himself for the inevitable train wreck that was going to be his day. He didn't think he could take much more than that before one of the Halliwells braved the stacks and dragged him out. In the meantime, though, he holed up in the Magic School library, using the time to figure out exactly what had happened to him in the Manor's kitchen. He was still shaken from it. Every so often he'd reach up to the left side of his chest, just to make sure his heart was still beating.

He still felt... odd, though he couldn't pinpoint what was off. It was like he was... detached. Floating above his own head and watching someone else live his life for him. Every once in a while a stray feeling or alien thought passed through his mind like a ghost, nondescript but there. When that wasn't happening, he'd get aches and pains, sharp and sudden, but barely there, skin prickling like it had just fallen asleep before disappearing in the next second.

Chris jumped as he felt another pain down his back, shooting down his spine in hasty spikes. He hissed and snapped the book in his lap shut irritably. It was getting worse. He twisted to rub his back, mind drifting off again, chasing down possibilities at a hundred miles an hour. Then the idea struck him...

What if it wasn't magical? What it it was it wasn't some magical backlash or long distance curse? What if there was just some normal _mortal_ problem?

"You're in the way,"

Chris nearly jumped at the voice, and he twisted to see a man standing next to his chair, a rust red book in hand. He was sharp faced and pale. Hell, the man didn't look like he'd slept in years. Chris frowned at him, naturally suspicious. The man seemed surprised for a second and raised his hands as if surrendering.

"Apologies," He said in a thin voice, "I must return this book." He pointed lightly and Chris followed his finger to the shelf directly behind him.

He should have felt apologetic, he was sure, but another wisp of emotion danced through his skull, sending him into a dark suspicious mood for a moment. He moved out of the way wordlessly, eyes narrowed.

The man simply nodded a thanks and awkwardly slipped behind him to stash the book in its empty spot. He moved to turn away before something on the shelf caught his eye and he reached out to pull three more books out and put them back in their correct order.

Chris crossed his arms impatiently, staring the man down, "Are you a librarian?"

The man stopped shortly, in the middle of freeing six more books to be put back, blinking at him dimly. "No." He shook his head and returned to putting the tomes in their rightful space.

_[[ I call upon the ancient power. To help us in this darkest hour. Let the book return to this place. Claim refuge in its rightful space.]]_

Chris blinked, momentarily shocked at the random spell, before forcefully shaking the thoughts away and turning back to the man who seemed to be completely lost in his own head, shifting books down another shelf to make room for the proper owners.

"So you're a teacher, then?" Chris pressed.

The man twisted, yet again, seeming surprised that he was being talked to. "No. I'm not a teacher." He moved to go back to the shelves, but Chris telekinetically pulled the books from his hands and slammed them into their respective spots.

"You're too old to be a student. So who are you?" Chris demanded.

For a split second, the man seemed angry, clouded hazel eyes narrowing dangerously, and in a flash, it was gone.

"Alumni," He stated simply, "I used to go here."

Chris huffed moodily, as the random emotion retreated, making him feel off balance and floaty again. He didn't like it.

"...you are?" The man returned, unblinking.

"Leaving." Chris grabbed his jacket, frowning forcefully and trying to pass by the creepy pale man... except said creepy pale man evidently didn't want to let him leave. He'd stepped right into Chris's path, cutting off any escape in the narrow aisle.

"You are also too old to be a student." The man stared up at him, until his eyes slid to the side where a book about imps was completely out of place between two spell books.

Chris glared, "Alumni. Now if you'd just let me pass, I'll give you and your OCD some alone time, you both seem to love each other very, very much."

The man's attention snapped back, "No. What is your name."

Chris sighed and swiped a hand over his eyes. All of a sudden he just felt so tired, so spent. He eased a breath out, trying to dispel the weird mood and mostly succeeding. He looked back to the shorter man who was still staring at him unnervingly.

"Look, I'm sorry I snapped. I'm just not feeling well. If you could just step aside, I need to go talk to a healer about it."

The man blinked quickly and tilted his head. "No."

"Okay, man," Chris snorted, anger returning quickly, "**Move.**"

"No."

"Oh, that's it." Chris raised his hands and gestured at the shelves, sending books sailing from opposite shelves and nesting back absolutely out of order.

The man's mouth dropped open and a small infantile sound dropped out of his mouth. It was the high pitched whine of a toddler who'd had his toys taken away. Chris felt momentarily bad before slipping past the man and escaping.

Another pain stabbed him in the ankle, tripping up his steps. He managed to catch himself on a desk, and waited as his ankle throbbed for a few seconds before it faded completely.

"Christopher," Ms. Donovan came up next to him, patting him on the shoulder in slightly mollifying way only a childhood babysitter could do. "Are you alright, dear?"

He tested his ankle hesitantly. The pain was completely gone, "Yeah," He frowned, too confused to be embarrassed at tripping over nothing, "I think I'm- Ow! Son of a bitch!" Chris jolted and pulled his forearm up against his chest in pain.

"What in the..." Chris pulled his arm out slowly and heard Ms. Donovan gasp as they both watch his sleeve quickly saturate with red, his blood already running down his fingers and pooling on the floor.

**9:45 am.**

"Why won't it heal?" Ms. Donovan asked worriedly, hands gripping Chris's shoulder protectively. Chris pressed his lips together at the pain, wondering the exact same thing but not particularly wanting to venture an answer.

The floating feeling had decreased somewhat, receding into the back of his mind, occasionally taunting him with bare flashes of recognition or feelings that didn't even last long enough for him to give a name to. He didn't really want to think about that either, especially not in front of Ms. Donovan. She was a sweet woman and deserved not to worry.

It didn't help that she'd absolutely refused to leave him alone, dragging him up to his father's office and tearing through the halls to find a whitelighter when they discovered Leo wasn't there.

Now the two of them had him firmly seated on the sofa, arm stretched out with the Whitelighter, Joseph, bent over it, spreading a disgusting looking gritty brown paste over the open gash on the inside of his arm.

"You're lucky, you know," Joseph glanced up briefly, "If you'd have been outside of magic school when this had happened..."

Chris just grunted in agreement, tapping irritably with his good hand as the whitelighter pushed the goop hastily into the still oozing gash. He got that Joseph was just attempting to get the bleeding to stop, but could he at least _try _not to cause more pain?

Joseph smoothed the paste out, making Chris hiss, before bringing out a bowl of purple tinged water and pouring it over his arm. The paste and blood slicked off, revealing a scabbed over, but obviously much more healed wound on his arm.

"So?" Ms. Donovan looked at the whitelighter expectantly, "Why didn't it heal?"

Joseph frowned quickly as he pulled out some clean bandages and went to wind them around his arm. "I have no idea," he shook his head, then paused and looked up at Chris almost hesitantly, "unless it was-"

"Self inflicted?" Chris asked, annoyed that he would even think that. "No. It was _not_." He sank back into the chair, tired and blood deprived.

Ms. Donovan patted him on the arm sympathetically, "We really should find your father."

Chris cracked open an eye and looked down at himself, frowning. The cut had most likely nicked something major in his arm because his side was almost completely covered in blood. He looked like a suicide victim at a bad haunted house. The thought made him almost sympathize with Joseph's thought... which then made him jump to what his parents would think.

"Augh," He slid a hand across his face again, "No we shouldn't."

The woman and the whitelighter blinked at him. Joseph spoke first, "Why the hel- ...heck not?"

Chris sent him a wry grin. He must be new.

"Look," He sat up straighter, trying to convince the both of him he was fine, "My parents are crazy protective enough as it is. If they see me like I am now, they're going to have a coronary and then Mel will _never_ get to move out of the house. So no, we're not going to tell them."

The Whitelighter and Librarian traded looks then turned back to him as if he was nuts.

"Just!" He added quickly, "just until I get a change of clothes and a reason for this at least. If I can propose a solution, then they'll be less likely to freak out. Okay?" He eyed them both, willing them to go along with it.

Neither of them looked particularly happy to be put at odds with the ex-elder and eldest Charmed One, but with a little more prodding, they eventually agreed to giving him two hours to fess up or they would for him.

Chris pulled his watch out of his pocket and used his clean sleeve to wipe the blood off the face.

Whoops. In all this, he'd nearly forgot. So much for the creepy correct internal clock.

"Ms. Donovan, Joseph. Thanks, but I'm gonna get started on this right now." He went to jump off the couch and was hit with a severe case of blood loss induced vertigo before regaining his bearings and orbing out. He barely comprehended the transfer, knowing where to go by heart, a few seconds later, he materialized in another apartment.

"There you are, I was about to get..."

Chris heard her voice before he even finished orbing, her tanned face and dyed copper hair forming as the blue lights of the orbs cleared his vision. She took one look at him and her face dropped into open disbelief. "...worried." She finished her sentence dully.

"Uh, hey," He smiled apologetically, "Sorry I'm late. I was a bit ...sidetracked."

"Tell me who did this," Bianca looked up, face dark, "because I'm going to kill them."

* * *

A/N: Yep. Bianca's going to be around. I think people mistreat her a lot in fics and I've never quite understood the outright hate people have for her. She's just about as contrary as Chris is and I find that ridiculously interesting. Plus, the poor boy has gone through hell and dammit, he deserves to be happy. SO! Yeah, hullo Bianca. Also, I can barely remember Ms. Donovan. If she's out of character, I blame her old age.

Cheers.


	3. Secret Secrets

Disclaimer: Blah. Blah. Do not own. If I did, I would have shot them for the crappy effects in season 8. Really. Have a little pride, guys. Moving on...  
All sections are in the unchanged timeline unless otherwise stated.

**Chapter Three: Secret Secrets.**

**November 16th, 2025**

"You know this will never work, don't you."

Chris barely stopped, mid-motion, trying not to let the words take on any meaning. Trying not to pay attention to the defeated tilt to Bianca's stance. He could barely even see her though the lattices and leftover construction equipment that choked the floor of P3. She was just flashes of color illuminated behind tarps, carefully separated from him... unreachable.

He shook his head sharply and turned back to place the last two warding crystals at the base of the door, each lighting up pleasantly to tell them they were safe. Bianca shifted slightly, arms loosely crossed as she looked up into the stage lights above her. Chris crossed the floor slowly, using the time to steel himself.

"Don't worry," He said finally, reaching the base of the stage and staring up at her, "They won't find you here. There's almost as many wards here as Magic School."

Bianca looked down at him, fingers drumming on her arm, "You know that wasn't what I was talking about."

Chris simply shrugged, "Really? Because I didn't peg you for someone who'd break up with a guy for something this little."

"This _little?_" She groaned and pressed a finger to her forehead, "You call demons a little problem?"

She quickly halted that argument as soon as he saw his posture. She'd almost forgotten who she was speaking to. Demons _were _a daily event to a Halliwell.

"It's not just this," She started again. "This is just another omen and you know it. Only six months together and all these problems, plus this? All the secrecy, the running behind our family's backs and now _another _demon attack." Bianca turned on her heel, hair whipping angrily around her, shoulders bowed. "Wake up, Halliwell."

Chris leaned on the stage heavily, not sure what to say. He couldn't claim he hadn't been expecting this. As much as he insisted that demons were a minor inconvenience, this attack had whole other connotations. This was the wakeup call, the attack set to remind them that the act of simply being together was more dangerous then anything either of them had done so far.

At first they'd tried to minimize the danger. They thought if they kept their relationship secret, it'd be fine. They didn't want the magical world to get in an uproar over what could just be some fling that'd burn out in a matter of days.

Then the days turned to weeks then to months and both of them were slowly beginning to realize that this wasn't something they could really just drop anymore, and yet the complications were still there. It was only a matter of time before someone found out... and they did.

The Phoenixes had signed several treaties agreeing to neutrality, knowing that the world was due to flip moralities sooner or later and they didn't want to be caught in the middle. As long as they didn't throw in with one side or another, they were safe. One of those treaty holders became aware of their relationship and found it in direct conflict. Bianca was officially fair game and an easy target.

The attack had set their problems in strict focus.

Bianca knew they could deal with this, no problem, but it opened up her line of sight for what the future could hold. They'd win this fight, sure, but there'd be others. She'd accepted a long time ago that being a Phoenix brought certain demonic hangups, but she hadn't really anticipated dragging those problems onto someone else... She hadn't imagined that she'd actually care. For once in her life, she wasn't worried about herself. She knew she couldn't deal with it if something happened to Chris, and that scared her more than any demon.

It was better to end it now, before this small problem became a big one and Chris got caught up in it. If she had to hurt him a little to keep him safe overall... so be it.

The Phoenix turned, steeling her nerves and keeping her face carefully neutral.

"We had our laughs," She stated imperiously, "Anything more would be greedy. The Powers have made it pretty damn clear as to how this has got to end."

Chris dipped his head, keeping silent. A deep seated dread had taken root, even as he tried to close himself off for the inevitable end. If she wanted to end it, that was her decision. Sometimes things didn't work out, statistics showed that most relationships didn't last more than two years, maybe it was best to just end it early and get it over with.

He would have, if it weren't for that damn inner voice that was screaming at him to grow a pair. The voice that was saying, like it or not, he loved her and he was not losing her again, especially to some two bit mid-range demons. It was entirely irrational, but he wasn't going to let this end. Damn the consequences.

"The Powers huh?" Chris said flatly, staring up at her abruptly, "You think I care about them? I'm half _whitelighter, _if you haven't noticed. If anyone in my family cared about what _they_ though I wouldn't even exist right now. And the demons? I care about what they think even less."

Chris' voice was deadly cold, "If those are the only reasons you have for breaking up with me, you should really start working on some new ones, cause I'm just not buying it right now."

Bianca hopped down gracefully from the stage and poked her finger sharply in his shoulder, "You're over simplifying this. You-"

"Do you love me?" Chris grabbed her hand before she could jab him again and stared up at her defiantly. Bianca just stared at him, dumbstruck for a moment.

"That's not fair." She tried to pull away but Chris caught a better grip on her wrist and rooted her there.

"Answer." He ordered.

Bianca just glared back. "Are you infuriating on purpose, Christopher, or just to me?"

"Depends on the day," He allowed himself a smile.

"You..." Bianca seethed, frustrated that he wasn't understanding, desperate for an argument. "You don't get it. My family _hates_ Halliwells."

"Them and everyone else, I'm used to it," Chris shrugged, "Answer the question."

"My family would love any excuse to start a feud with you and if this goes up in flames, they'll _have _that reason. You want to be responsible for that?"

"Doesn't matter. Do you love me?"

"God damnit, yes!" Bianca said sharply, only just resisting the urge to clamp a hand over her mouth.

She hadn't meant to say that. She scrambled for a recovery.

"Damnit, Halliwell. I may love you now, but that might not always be. As soon as that happens you'll have that feud."

Chris grinned, a little punch drunk at the argument. He wanted to say right then and there that they'd never fall out of love. He was a hairsbreadth from saying it too, he was so giddy. He almost had the urge to check and see if Coop was hiding under a scaffold or something before he realized he didn't care either way. Even in the haze, his natural fatalistic instincts kicked in.

It _would_ be bad if they broke up... and so many relationships didn't last there was a real chance they'd end up the same way. Besides, he didn't know how he was going to explain all of this to his family, let alone Bianca's, and he didn't feel like getting an energy ball to the gut any time soon.

"So, we just won't tell them," Chris shook his head, "We keep it secret."

Bianca froze, fingers clasped into fists, fighting a loosing battle in her mind with the little bits of hope that kept taking root. What if... but no... she couldn't keep that kind of secret from her family. They'd find out and the result would be the same.

"Two years." Chris added quickly, he let go of Bianca's wrist and reached up to run a knuckle along her jaw, attempting to keep her attention. She leaned into it in spite of herself, pinning her lips together. "Two years from now, we'll keep it secret until then. If we can make it that far without crashing and burning then we'll tell both our families. If we break up before then, no harm done."

Bianca narrowed her eyes, staying silent for a long time. It was all for show, her resistance was broken down and she was running on pure stubbornness at this point, mind reeling. Perhaps it wasn't just a bad idea. He could take care of himself, and if it got bad enough, she'd just end it then...

The Phoenix sighed, clearly annoyed, "This would be so much easier if you'd just let me break up with you."

Chris didn't wait a second longer before he leaned in to catch a deep kiss. There was a certain final feeling to it, like you got when you signed a contract. This was it, their lot in life, for better or worse and all that. Bianca leaned in, catching her hands in his collar and letting the usual sense of unnatural ease overtake her. Like everything was good and the world was how it should be. Like she'd found a long lost friend.

They were so involved that they two of them barely reacted when lightening crackled across P3's walls, trashing the wards and signaling the unfortunate entrance of five demons.

"Where's the Phoenix?" The largest demon crowed.

The two witches didn't even bother looking at them for a second, faced descending into annoyance. With the flick of a hand, all five of the demons found themselves pinned awkwardly to the nearest wall.

"I'd forgotten about them..." Chris sighed.

"Me too," Bianca glared, reluctantly letting go of Chris' shirt and summoning an athame. "If we're going to keep this secret, we'll have to start with them."

Chris just grinned and shrugged, bowing out of her way, "Ladies first."

**November 16th, 2027. 11:00 am.**

"Maybe they were invisible with a blessed athame." Bianca swung around the bathroom doorway, clean shirt in hand. Chris just shook his head, and dipped the now bloodstained rag into the sink.

"In Magic School? Not likely." He shrugged, "Besides, there's no hole in the shirt."

Bianca sagged against the doorway, straightening her jaw in frustration, "What about the Vesper?"

"They're neutral. No reason for it."

"Some kind of curse?"

"Not in Magic School." Chris wrung the cloth out gingerly, trying to ignore the twinge in his arm as he did. Probably wouldn't help the situation any, not with Bianca on the warpath. She'd calmed down a reasonable amount when he'd cleaned up and assured her that he was on the straight path to recovery but she was still far from relaxed.

The Phoenix heaved a sigh, "What if we use an Intent to Harm spell?"

Chris laughed at that, tugging the shirt out of her hands, "What, and be reminded that most of the underworld would be happy to kill me given the chance? No thanks."

"You're not helping." Bianca frowned and gently caught his injured arm, observing the partially healed injury again before she reached across the counter and snatched a new roll of bandages, wordlessly setting to wrapping it back up. Chris let her, happy to give her something to concentrate on.

He knew that being out of control of the situation bothered her, it was something they had very much in common. The difference was, while he'd learned that at some point you just had to accept the world was crap and you lived on anyway, Bianca wasn't willing to do that. She would much rather bend the world until it fit her own ideals. Problem was sometimes that was impossible... and she just didn't find that acceptable.

Chris was beginning to regret coming here first. He'd been so worried about what his family would think if he orbed in soaked in blood, that he hadn't even begun to consider how his girlfriend would feel.

Bianca's gaze flickered up momentarily and her eyebrows pinched together, "Stop that."

He blinked, confused, "What?"

"You're blaming yourself again," She twisted the last bit of cotton around his wrist and fastened it with an expert hand. "I'm a big girl, Halliwell, I can handle my own neurosis. You just worry about your own problems for once. "

Chris choked out a laugh and hooked his good arm around her shoulders, dropping a kiss on her temple. She merely raised an eyebrow at him, still wanting an answer, though he could clearly see that the edge of worry had faded.

"Fine." He shrugged, "I don't see what the big deal is, though. If this person was trying to kill me, they'd have to be a complete idiot to try it at Magic School. It's impossible there."

Bianca scoffed, pulling back slightly, "Even an idiot can have a good day, Chris, and we're going to have to get this taken care of before we meet up with my family."

"Another good reason to not look into it." Chris deadpanned.

"It was your idea in the first place, remember?"

"Yeah, yeah, I remember." Chris sighed and reluctantly loosened his grip on her enough to shrug into his new blood-free shirt, "Not my brightest. I'm good with secrets, just not telling them."

Bianca snickered lightly, "Have I ever told you that you'd make a better Phoenix than a Halliwell?"

"Repeatedly, but I don't think I'd look good in the uniform."

She laughed brightly, popping up on her toes for a quick kiss and exited in a fan of dark hair. Chris settled back, letting himself really relax for the first time that day. He had to admit, injury or no, he felt the best he had in days. That floating feeling was completely gone and any dread that had lingered from earlier was just a passing thought. Maybe it wouldn't be too bad to take a page from Bianca's book. He was tired of laying in front of the steamroller. It was far past time to take this whole curse thing and get to the bottom of it.

He got two steps into the living room by the time the metaphorical steamroller decided to make its entrance. Chris halted, momentarily dazed. It was like the world had gone bright and dark at the very same time. The disconnected feeling was back, full force... and so was a hell of a lot of pain, so much that it took him a minute to really figure out where it was coming from.

Bianca stepped back into the room just as he found it, hand covering the newfound hole in his stomach like his life depended on it. As the world grayed and his legs gave up on him, Chris realized that was a particularly apt statement.

And then the world ceased to exist.

A/N: Shorter chapter, but it was something I had to get out of the way before the whole shebang really starts. If you haven't caught on by now, this whole fic is in the space of one day, so it's pretty much going to be pedal to the metal from here on in.


	4. The Afterlife

Disclaimer: Not mine... not quite sure who owns it these days, but more power to them.

All sections are in the unchanged timeline unless otherwise stated.

**Chapter Four: The Afterlife.**

**November 16th 2004. (Unchanged Timeline)**

"Clarence..." Chris spotted the Angel of Death in the corner and smiled despite himself, "Are you stalking me again?"

The Angel smiled back, hands clasped serenely in front of him. His janitorial outfit had been replaced with something more appropriate of his station. It was somehow reassuring for no reason Chris could put a finger on. Even living a life like his where demons and magic live in every corner, the idea that an Angel of Death had been spying on him for weeks was... unsettling, to put it lightly. It was nice to separate this person from that janitor who had come by and ironically told him to get a life every other night.

Then again, this time it made things feel that much more real. A lot of things were contributing to that though, most particularly the knife wound in his stomach, courtesy of Gideon, which was stubbornly refusing to heal.

The Angel stepped forward, "What can I say, I kinda like ya, kid. I had been hoping it wouldn't come to this."

"But you knew it would..." Chris said, bitterness clearly evident. On a different day he'd bother to be nicer, but he was honestly just too tired.

"Honestly? I wasn't sure." The angel shrugged, "Never quite know with you. You've had a habit of beating the odds before."

The smile faded on Chris's lips as he felt the last bit of hope leave him. That last scrap that told him Leo would whip up some kind of miracle or the sisters would crash in and save the day like the always used to, like they hopefully would in the future. A horrible seething fear wound its way around his spine. What if he hadn't done enough? What if it was all for nothing... damn, that would suck.

Chris forced his eyes open, not realizing they'd closed, and found Clarence, "Wyatt and all them..."

The Angel smiled conspiratorially, "It will be rough for the next years, but your family will be happy."

The fear sank as fast as it came and he shook out a shallow breath, "Good..."

He had a feeling he should be scared, or angry... any one of those stages of death would be natural at this point. He certainly didn't want to die, he'd worked way too damn hard to stay alive all this time that it should feel like a monumental waste to get this close and have it end. Then again, he'd always been prepared, ever since Wyatt took control and the world went to literal hell.

That's why he'd been so entirely reluctant to leave Bianca in the attic that first time and so willing the second. He knew he wouldn't be coming back to that time alive. Maybe that was just his lot in this life. His job was to save everyone else. Wyatt, his parents, aunts, Bianca. Every face he could never forget in the hollows of the safe houses that were never safe, and all the hundreds of thousands that he'd never have the chance to even see that suffered all the same. That was his lot.

The real question to as is: Was he okay with that?

Chris looked over at Clarence, not at all surprised at the expression on his face. An expression that said he'd heard and understood everything that had just run through Chris's head. The witchlighter just rolled his eyes at him.

"Well," The Angel asked prompted softly, "Are you? Your life for theirs?"

Chris just stared at the ceiling, noticing how he couldn't feel his fingers any more.

"Yeah." Chris whispered finally, giving a sarcastic smile inwardly because he didn't have the energy to do it outwardly, "I'm okay with that."

The Angel lowered his head in respect, nodding.

"Just... one thing." Chris mumbled.

"Yes?"

He forced his eyes open again, "Let me see my dad again, just for a bit."

"Sure thing, kid." Clarence smiled, settling down weightlessly and resting a cool hand on his forehead, "Just rest. He'll be back before you know it."

Chris nodded shortly, fading just before the Paige's desperate voice broke the silence in the house. He barely noticed as the police swarmed in and out. He didn't notice his aunt elbowing her way through the police, raising her hands and unsuccessfully willing herself to develop the ability to heal. He just concentrated on breathing. Clarence waited there, silent and invisible, buying the boy time until Leo returned, giving him a mental nudge to wake him.

Even with this talents, he couldn't hold the boy for for long, not if the plan was going to work. He managed a few minutes, the only thing keeping Chris alive was pure will on the boy's part, but eventually, that too gave out.

Clarence stepped in carefully around the grieving Elder, drawing his soul and body away, leaving Leo with nothing. He felt for the man, but there was no time.

A flash and he was standing next to an operating table, staring down at Piper Halliwell, blood draining out of her at an alarming rate, spellbound doctors not trying nearly as hard as they should.

Piper was not destined to die, he knew. The baby, however...

Clarence sent a look up through the ceiling, even as he felt power that wasn't entirely his own drain into him. He hoped that the choices of the day had not been made lightly. He hoped they knew what they were doing.

With a glowing hand, The Angel of Death reached out, and changed destiny.

**November 16th, 2027. 11:20**

Mel flipped upside down on the couch, feet hooked over the back as she nudged the pages to the next chapter in her french book, making rhymes in her head already.

It was a bad habit, she knew. Like a gun in a mortal's hands, witches really shouldn't rhyme unless they mean it, even in their heads. She couldn't entirely help it though. She'd been fascinated with words and the concept of spells across languages. She knew three fairly fluently so far and was working on another six. She was extremely good at it, and knew it. Leo had said it was her heavily dormant whitelighter genes taking effect. Mel preferred to think she was just awesome.

She flipped through the pages, easily picking up verb conjugations and well hidden grammatic rules before flipping again, mood already darkening, wishing for an excuse to sneak out for a while. Just a bit, that was all she asked! She'd even take a demon vanquish if that's what it took and she wasn't too overly fond of those...

"HALLIWELLS!"

Mel screamed involuntarily as the foreign voice tore through the walls like they weren't even there. The youngest Halliwell didn't even spare a second to try to decipher who it was, she was already tumbling to her feet, hitting the carpet running. She skidded to a halt in the foyer, taking the space of a breath to gauge her surroundings. She saw the woman first, dark, beautiful, and imposing... then she saw her brother.

Mel didn't ask questions, she illusioned up a fireball, hurling it in the woman's general direction. It hit and fizzled against the stained glass as the woman shimmered out to avoid it. She reappeared, a few feet to the side, unmistakably rattled. Frankly, Mel didn't care. She faked orbing in a crystal cage and hoped that would scare her into staying put for long enough. Her priority was Chris.

She skidded next to him, hitting the floor gracelessly next to him, hands clamping down on the wound in his stomach in a way that would most likely be painful. Chris didn't even twitch. "Wyatt! Paige! Dad! Anyone! _Everyone!_" She called at the ceiling, "Now! Now, now!"

The room infused with blue and all of a sudden the foyer was a whole lot more crowded, Wyatt and Paige appearing on either side of her. A set of unidentified hands tried to pull her back and she tried to shrug them off, until she realized it was her father. She looked back at him, scared. He was still in his school robes and white as a sheet, staring at the wound in Chris's stomach like he'd never seen blood before.

Leo caught Paige's eyes for the barest of seconds, communicating something Mel couldn't even guess at. Mel stepped back and wrapped her arms around her father even as she felt him shaking his head and mumbling.

"Not again... this isn't possible... not possible"

Mel tore her eyes away again, "What are you talking about?"

Leo didn't even seem to hear her.

"Damnit," Wyatt cursed, glaring at Paige even as the barest thought of giving up went through her head, "So help me, if you give up on him..."

Paige glared, the glow in her hands returning full force, "I wasn't gonna!"

Each pressed in forcing every bit of their considerable power and the wound stubbornly refused to heal. It felt as if they were pressing against some immovable wall... and then, with the same terrifying feeling that someone got just as the thin ice broke beneath them... something gave.

In a bare second the wound healed and shut, blood disappearing completely as if it were a dream. Chris gasped, breathing in like he never had before, turning onto his side and coughing. Paige looked up at Leo with watery eyes and smiled.

**11:30 am.**

Leo couldn't stop his hands from shaking, even as he pulled the blanket over his unconscious son, hand jumping to the pulse on his wrist every few minutes, just to reassure himself. He couldn't leave for fear that, the minute he did, Chris would disappear without a trace. Leo had this lingering feeling that the last 23 years had been nothing but a particularly cruel dream and he'd eventually wake up and realized Chris was dead, Gideon was still out there, and Wyatt was too far down the darker path to save anymore.

He didn't know what he'd do if that were true...

"Dad..." Melinda pulled on his sleeve hesitantly, face lined with worry, "Dad, I, uh, think you need to go talk to Wyatt."

"Wyatt?" Leo shook himself out of his thoughts and stared at his daughter, "Why? Is something wrong?"

He must have sounded more scared than he'd intended because Mel blinked in surprise and waved her hands for him to calm down, "N-No. No. He's just... eh, go see." She pointed tiredly at the foyer where Leo gradually became aware of raised voices. How had he not noticed that before?

"Oh," Leo stood up and pulled Melinda into the seat, "Stay with your brother. If anything happens, you know what to do."

Melinda nodded sharply, "Sure thing."

The ex-elder reluctantly left the room, heading through the sun room tracing the voices into the foyer. The words slowly came into focus, one was Wyatt sounding angrier than he'd ever heard him sound. The other, he wasn't quite sure... but she didn't sound entirely pleasant either.

"...if I had wanted to kill him, why in the hell would I bring him back here? No assassin would be _that _stupid." Leo rounded the corner, eyebrows coming up at the sight. Wyatt was hovering just outside of the edge of the crystal cage, staring down at a woman half his size trapped within it. Leo's mind numbly registered that he'd seen the woman when he'd arrive before, but he'd been too preoccupied with Chris he hadn't given her a further thought. Seeing things as they were, he felt he should have.

"So you admit you're an assassin?" Wyatt sniped, arms crossed.

"No!" She paused, face twisting in annoyance "Well, technically, yes, but not right now. God damn it you're obnoxious."

"Oh, I can be a lot a hell of a lot worse than this, just keep pushing it..." Wyatt said darkly, snapping Leo back into full awareness. He stepped up behind his son and gently put a hand on his shoulder, not wanting to scare him into doing something he'd regret. Wyatt finally blinked and turned to him.

"Dad..." He breathed, looking slightly embarrassed.

"Who's this?" He nodded at Bianca, her stance hadn't calmed much, but her gaze had shifted from outright annoyance to something entirely more calculating.

"Don't know, she hasn't said," Wyatt shrugged bitterly, "She shimmered in with Chris _literally_ red handed with blood. She's admitted she's an assassin and she's obviously a demon. There's no reason for Chris to be around her."

Bianca snorted uncharitably, "You ever consider that we might be friends?"

"Don't lie." Wyatt glared, "Chris isn't that stupid, and even if he was, he would have told me."

"Maybe he had a good reason to not trust you." Bianca sniped right back.

Using every ounce of his pacifistic sensibility, Leo pried his son back away from the crystal cage and turned to talk to the woman himself. She wasn't exactly innocent looking, but Leo had the benefit of past knowledge. This whole situation was entirely too coincidental to not be related to what happened all those years ago. He was willing to allow the girl the opportunity to talk, at least.

Leo walked up to her slowly, "Well?"

The Phoenix shifted awkwardly under Leo's pointed Dad Look. The twice blessed was intimidating to be sure, in a way that made her insides go cold, but the ex-elder was intimidating in an entirely other way. She hurriedly rounded up her sarcasm, stuck her chin out defiantly, and bit out a reply, "Well, what?"

Leo shook his head, "I appreciate you bringing my son back here in time, and I apologize if you are no threat, but we have to be sure. This family has many enemies."

"Mmhm." Bianca mumbled noncommittally, averted her eyes, deciding it was just easier that way.

"This will be easier on everyone if you just told us who you are..." Leo pressed.

Bianca stayed silent, but another voice answered for her.

"That," Piper said as soon as the orbs allowed, "Is _Bianca."_ The three charmed ones lined up behind him, all looking various shades of mistrustful.

Leo stared quickly between them and the trapped Phoenix witch, mouth dropped open. He turned back to the sisters, "_That_ Bianca?"

"Well, yeah," Paige said as if it was obvious.

"You don't recognize her? Cause I sure as hell do." Phoebe added.

Leo shook his head and ran a hand over his face in memory, "I only saw her for a second before she kicked me in the face."

"Ooh, yeah, ouch," Piper patted him on the shoulder sympathetically, "Sorry bout that honey. Now. _You._ Good or evil?" Piper pointed at Bianca expectantly, foot tapping against the floor.

Bianca gaped at them, absolutely floored, "What are you guys even _talking_ about, and how do you know my name?"

"Oh, you'd be surprised, missy," Piper smiled in an entirely unfriendly way, speaking in that completely nonplussed way of hers, "Bianca, Phoenix. Shimmers, conjures daggers, kicks my husband in the face. Future-you decided she wanted to hurt my family and kill my son. So! Don't blame us if we're jumping to conclusions."

Bianca's face dropped into open confusion mouth working uselessly.

"Yeaah," Paige shrugged cheerfully, "Don't ask, it'll make your brain hurt. I know mine does!" Phoebe nodded, rubbing her forehead in agreement.

Bianca narrowed her eyes at them, snapping her mouth shut and considering her options. When she tried again, she spoke very slowly, like one would when they realized they'd been locked in the cage with the circus lion, "You're all crazy, aren't you..."

Wyatt snickered despite himself before he clamped a hand over his mouth.

"Oh just tell us if you're good or evil or we're gonna start casting spells, and I don't feel in a particularly rhymy mood right now." Phoebe smiled brightly.

"I'm _good_!" Bianca bit out, before crossing her arms in a huff, "Not that you're going to believe me."

The three sisters traded a look with each other, staging a wordless conversation only years of familiarity could bring. A few moments deliberation and they turned back, smiles turning ice cold.

"You're right," Phoebe said, seriously, "We don't trust you."

**11:50**

Chris woke to the painfully familiar sight of the Manor's sitting room and groaned. Seriously? This was... well, heaven or hell, wherever he was supposed to go. Either way, it was kinda lame. Or maybe that was the point, he realized. He'd done some pretty horrible things in the name of his mission, maybe this was the payback. In death he had to stay in the goddamn manor and second guess himself for the rest of eternity.

Oo...these hell guys _were_ good.

Chris rolled over and gaged the room. Everything was as it should be, a place for everything and everything in its place, as it were. All except one thing. The Witchlighter's eyes fell on a book on the floor, sticking out like the metaphorical sore thumb.

A French book? He stared at it blanky.

His punishment was to sit in a hell shaped like his childhood home and learn French?

Oh this was bullshit. He did _not_ go back into the past and freaking die at the hands of some deranged Elder to _learn goddamn French._

"Oh, geeze, Chris," A voice called over his shoulder and he felt someone pushing him down, "Lay down, you barely have any blood left, don't go sloshing it around too much."

He looked up at a woman a few years younger than him, brown haired, green eyed, fussy as all hell it seemed.

Melinda...

and then it all came rushing back. Two sets of memories abruptly split making him grab at his temples in pain. The world seemed to separate and scramble, swirling around like a maniacal kaleidescope. He felt his mind fraying at the edges, every emotion vying for attention all at once. Eventually it slowed, his mind separating into two sides.

...and then the world made _so much sense_.

All the moments of intuition. All the times he'd opened up a book and realized he'd read it before. All the random demons or people who did double takes at him as of late. The consistent and repeated Deja Vu... He tried to fit the feeling into words, trying to explain to Melinda that he'd succeeded. Holy crap, he'd _succeeded._

All he could muster was, "Oh."

Mel looked at him, convinced he'd gotten brain damaged, "Oh?"

A wide grin split his face and he reached out and placed a kiss on her forehead, "You have _no_ idea."

"Ew. Got that right, cause, what the hell-Heey, sit back down!" She swiped at her forehead childishly and reached out to catch her brother as he made an attempt to stand up. She really didn't have to, as his legs had decided they didn't want to cooperate anymore and crumpled under him.

"Woah, there, buster," Melinda struggled to keep the substantially taller Halliwell upright. It didn't help that he looked absolutely deranged right then, enough that she was starting to suspect some kind of demonic possession instead of brain damage... her brother _never_ smiled this much.

Chris sank back into the cushions, and covered his face briefly with his hands. It all just felt so surreal, having two lives at the same time. Like he could jump back and forth between them, his memories of the current timeline were in control, but he could reach between them. He tried concentrating on the other set of memories and felt them rise up. They were manageable for a bare second before they crumbled into chaos. Each of them demanding attention. Each memory waiting to be catalogued and processed, making him feel as if every death was a new, raw wound.

It was too much, he hurriedly reached for that numb part of his brain that had served him so well in his previous life. He sank into it with an audible sigh of relief, but the memories buzzed at the edges of his mind. He felt like he was going crazy having two versions of himself, same at the core but scarred in different ways.

He let out a calming breath, reaching the less wartorn version of himself, letting the old memories sink back into a comfortable hazy dream state, tame for the moment. He knew though, they were hovering there, waiting for him to slip, waiting to ambush him when he let his guard down. He shivered one last time and steeled himself.

He opened his eyes, images of blood and scorched cities still burned into the back of his eyelids, and lurched forward, attempting to stand up again. He fared better this time, ignoring Mel's annoyed protests.

"Where is everyone?" He asked her finally.

Melinda frowned, "Attic, of course, keeping an eye on the crazy lady."

"Crazy lady?" Chris frowned, trying to grasp at the right memories without calling any of the old ones up. Finally, one snapped into place, "You mean _Bianca?_ Bianca's here?"

Even as he said her name he regretted it. The memory of last time he'd seen her in the attic slapped him in the face, a piece of jagged wood through her stomach and a bare few moments left to live.

"Yeah, what's the deal with her anyway. Why are you hanging out with someone who can _shimmer_?" Melinda stood up next to him and put an arm around his waist to steady him. He barely acknowledged her and just pressed a hand to his forehead again, "Chris... I hate to sound redundant, but are you alright?"

Her brother winced for a second then sighed as whatever was bothering him seemed to fade, "Fine... or I will be as soon as I get to the attic."

Melinda pulled his arm around her shoulder with a sigh and pulled him toward the stairs, "I'd say no, you understand, but you wouldn't listen anyway."

Chris cracked a weary smile, "Smart girl."

They took a single step and immediately stopped, both very confused.

"Was I the only one who felt the floor shake?" Chris asked.

"Nnope..." Mel replied, popping the p cheerfully.

"Joy."

The tremors started again, sending the both of them clamoring to grab onto the railing of the stairs. The chandelier rattled above them loudly, the various pictures and decorations swinging on the walls dangerously. Just as a lamp skittered its way across the side table and was sent plummeting downward, it stopped.

...as a matter of fact everything stopped. In mid air.

"Oo, that's not natural," Mel pointed, mouth hanging open. She remembered her father's words quickly and grabbed onto Chris, performing her world famous disappearing act, covering them both in an illusion that looked precisely like what was behind them.

The house was completely silent for a moment, the lamp hanging in mid air in a way that would have been unsettling to anyone who hadn't grown up with something similar. This, though, this wasn't Piper's doing. They had no doubts their mother was, next to Wyatt, one of the most powerful witches out there, but she wasn't capable of stopping an earthquake...

So the two waited, minimizing their breathing and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

...and the other shoe anticlimactically walked right through the front door.

The newcomer wasn't intimidating. He was short, sharp, and pale in a very sickly way, hair thin and scraggly. The two Halliwells watched him with open confusion. Most demons they had to fight at least made some sort of magnificent entrance. This man seemed to be okay with just... shuffling inside on tiny, timid steps.

Chris recognized him instantly, jaw dropping. The guy from the library. He got a nearly irresistible urge to slap himself in the forehead and promise never to be rude to anyone ever again. If he could start and/or stop earthquakes, god knew what they were going to be dealing with, and he'd gone out of his way to piss the guy off.

The pale man shuffled in, careful to politely close the door before he entered further, looking around like a tourist. He spotted the lamp and halted, reaching out like he wasn't in control of his own arms and put the lamp back in its place. The thundering sound of footsteps on the stairs signaled the entrance of the other Halliwells.

"Woah!" Piper's hands immediately popped up and attempted to freeze the man. It didn't work. She tried it twice again with the same effect and then glared at her hands like they were disobedient children. The Pale Man stared at her and tilted his head to the side.

"Molecular manipulation is so limited." He said placidly, not intimidated in the least by the sight of them all glaring at him.

"Oh-ho," Piper raised her hands again, "I'll show you _limited_ buster, unless you tell me, right now, what you're doing in my house."

The man looked at her as if she were dim, "I'm here to set things right, of course."

"T-minus three seconds to explosion, buddy, be more specific. Set what right?" Piper waved her hands threateningly.

"Why, time, of course." The man frowned, "I'm going to set it back to the way it was."

A/N: A few notes: Firstly, I'm assuming Paige picked up a few more whitelighter powers in the gig, healing being the big one, I'm also going to say she can heal from greater distances thanks to TK. Yay for her.

Lastly: The problem with future fics is that there's a such a huge cast to deal with and you know so little about most of them that, no matter how you spin it, they're practically OC's anyway. I've just been trying to concentrate on Piper's kids, though I _do _know... a good deal about the other six. So I guess my question is, now that you've seen a bit more of Mel at least. What do you think of her? Her personality is pretty close to Grams's with Piper's sorta-kinda aversion to magic and just wanting the normal life gig... y'know with some quirks tossed in there. I always feel so icky about OC's and I just want to give the poor brothers a good sister. Soooo... Comments?


	5. Wibbly Wobbly, Timey Wimey

Disclaimer: Not mine... not quite sure who owns it these days, but more power to them.

Grab a sandwich cause this one is a doozy. Also prepare for Emo!Chris. Don't worry, he gets over it.

**Chapter Five: Wibbly Wobbly, Timey Wimey.**

**November 16th, 2020. Unchanged Future.**

Chris never thought he'd see the day when the Whitelighters gave up on the world... but it seemed appropriate that they'd do it on his birthday.

He'd grown accustomed to the background noise that was the whitelighter chatter, even dared to like it sometimes, when he gave in to a moment of nostalgia. He could remember that feeling comforting him to sleep on the bad nights when his mother would be out fighting demons or when Leo took Wyatt off for special twice blessed meetings. He'd convinced himself that the feeling was his father, watching over him even if he couldn't spare the time to be there.

What a load of crap that was.

That hum was nothing more than an overworld version of the collective unconscious. A joining of minds no more meaningful than a handful of people who happened to be waiting at the same bus stop.

If Leo had actually made any point of reaching beyond that base connection, even spared a glance once in a while, the Elders would have taken Wyatt seriously when they had a chance. They would have bound Wyatt's powers the minute he started letting demons live without explanation. When he started muttering to himself about power. When his first charge died... When their mother was murdered by a suspiciously well informed and all too prepared demon. When Wyatt didn't respond to Chris' calls as she quietly bled out on the floor... When Wyatt finally showed up with a nearly insane grin on his face...When Wyatt had locked Chris in the basement for six months until he "came to his senses."

It took a whole year for them to take Wyatt as a serious threat, and by that time he'd already killed the Cleaners and outed magic to the whole world.

The new witch hunt followed after that, starting right in the heart of San Francisco. The mortal hunters teamed up with Wyatt's demons and witches to wipe out any and all witches who refused to give up the "old ways" as Wyatt had dubbed them. The fringe covens went first, then the larger families.

Eventually, he and Wyatt were the only Halliwells left.

...and only _then_, did the Elders get concerned. Chris had heard whispers over the connection. Whispers of horror and alarm. Deliberating, constantly deliberating, never deciding, on what to do.

They whispered the word back and forth between each other, wondering if they could do it. Vanquish him, they said. But who was left to do it? All of the witches, their pawns, were dead. They didn't even know where to start.

Unfortunately for them, Wyatt could hear them too... and _he_ knew exactly where to start.

If Chris knew anything of Wyatt, and he felt he was the only one left who did, the Twice-Blessed wouldn't allow the threat to loom. He'd act. Violently.

He supposed he shouldn't have been surprised when that connection abruptly and brutally snapped, dropping the world into utter silence. He should have been prepared for the eventuality. Yet he wasn't.

The silence was excruciating.

The 16-year-old half Whitelighter collapsed to his knees into the dusty remains of a library, dragging his fingers across the remaining brick wall in a bid to keep standing. He felt the dirty mortar ripping into his hand but the pain just blended into the paralyzing ache.

"Jesus Christ, kid! You alright?" A voice, dimly familiar, drew him out of the silence, forcing him to quickly adapt to the sudden empty spot inside of him.

"Was he hit?" A old female voice chipped in, cracked from years of smoking, "We gotta keep moving if we want to make it to the bridge by sundown."

"I'm, eugh..." Chris attempted but ended on a graceless grunt as he attempted to push himself up the wall.

An hand dropped on his shoulder, dark skinned and sympathetic. Chris traced it back up to the owner, a middle aged man named Marco. Two others stood behind him, an elderly woman and her emaciated godson, barely out of college.

Chris forced himself to connect with them, even as the damned blackness of loss sucked at his shoelaces. They were his companions du jour. Just people he'd ran into and traveled with for a time as they attempted to get out of San Francisco as fast as they could. He hadn't asked about them and they had returned the favor. Their dinner conversation, however, had made their view on magical beings brutally clear. Chris didn't let it get to him, he was used to it at this point.

Those who accepted Wyatt's rule believed that if magical creatures couldn't be controlled and regulated, they were to be hunted down. Those who didn't accept Wyatt's rule hated magic just as much, blaming them in entirety as being responsible for their current situation.

Chris had learned to lie early on. Now he was Chris Perry, a good old natural (and more importantly, unmagical) American boy. He didn't even know the difference between an athame and a butter knife and couldn't rhyme if someone bought him a thesaurus. Nothing to see here, move along.

"Hey, Perry, speak up boy!" Marco rattled his shoulder again even as Chris slid back down the wall. He'd sunk back into that blackness where his whitelighter senses had been, drawn in again by a shimmer of something. He mentally reached for it, desperate for any connection at the moment.

It was a very, very bad idea.

Just as soon as he made the connection, he jumped back from it, both mentally and physically, scratching across the wall in his haste to get out of the space he'd been in.

"Run." He breathed out the word.

How could he be so stupid? Who was the only whitelighter still on this plane?

Marco stared at him, confused, but sympathetic, "C'mon kid, we should get you some rest."

"No!" Chris shoved him away as the older man reached out to help him up, sending the older man tumbling back. "You don't understand. Leave now."

The three mortals traded looks quickly, weighing the possibility of him being crazy versus actually surviving some kind of attack. After a beat, they took off in random directions, scuffling across loose rock. They weren't nearly quick enough.

The demons shimmered in, circling them in perfect military fashion.

"Well this was something of a pick me up," Wyatt called as the black orbs receded, leaving him standing just ahead of them. Chris noted, even as he tried to figure out some kind of exit, that Wyatt seemed to be beaten up worse than he'd seen in a long time.

He had to struggle down any long since used fraternal worry for him, waiting to ambush him and keep him from thinking straight. It'd been years and he still had troubles differentiating the Wyatt from his memories with the current, tyrannical version.

Marco and the other runners skittered back closer to him, trying to put as much space between themselves and the eldest Halliwell. They hit the brick wall next to him and stuck, seeing no way out.

"Well?" Wyatt raised his arms and smiled as if asking for a hug, "What, nothing? Nothing at all for your favorite brother? Come now, Chris. It hasn't been that long."

Chris felt the other's eyes on him, brains slowly connecting the dots, already aware that their stares had turned to animalistic glares of betrayal. He barely felt the loss. It was just three more drops in the bucket.

He pushed himself straighter and sent Wyatt a glare that would have killed a lower level demon, "What did you _do_?"

Wyatt tipped his head and looked down at himself, blood and bruises everywhere. He didn't seem concerned in the slightest. "You mean this? Just a little fight."

"A little fight?" Chris yelled, unbelieving, "You killed them all! I can't sense any of them!"

A flicker of annoyance graced Wyatt's face before melting into something so much more devious.

"I didn't kill them...all." Wyatt said deliberately, "They chose to cut themselves off. To leave us lowly earth dwellers on our own."

Chris felt it like a punch in the gut, "You're lying. They wouldn't abandon us."

Wyatt's face was stone still, "It was dad's choice."

Chris shook his head forcefully, not capable of coming up with a good argument. They wouldn't do that. Leo wouldn't do that. He might have been neglectful but he was never cruel. He wouldn't leave a whole world to suffer like that.

"He didn't even ask about you." Wyatt continued, running his own glowing hands down his arms, healing himself. Another perk of being the Twice Blessed. He turned his attention back to his brother, twisting the knife, "This is what I've always tried to tell you, Chris. Leo was never a good father to you because he was so absorbed with that idiotic neverending Good vs. Evil war. This is what I'm trying to prevent. The war has ended. No more good. No more evil. Just existence."

"...and power." Chris finished, sagging against the wall.

"And power." Wyatt nodded, seeming pleased at his addition.

"What do you want from me, Wyatt?" Chris looked up, feeling suddenly boneless.

Wyatt just shook his head lightly, "I just want to bring my brother home."

For the first time in years, with the ache of the realization that everyone he loved was dead or gone, Chris felt himself breaking down. Would it be so bad, just to go back where he could be Christopher Halliwell again and not just poor defenseless Chris Perry? Where he could be with the one person he had left? Loved in whatever twisted way Wyatt could offer anymore...

"Chris," Wyatt reached out a hand, "That's all I want. Let's just go home. I need you."

Liar... but what choice did he have?

Chris stared up, eyes focused steadily on Wyatt's.

"Let them go first."

Wyatt seemed to consider for a moment before nodding and again, pushing out his open hand. In a moment he'd blame on temporary insanity later, Chris took it. As the orbs took them away, Chris caught the edge of the demon's orders.

"Kill them."

**November 16th, 2027. 12:00**

The dread in Chris's stomach turned into quicksilver rage.

_"Why, time, of course."_ he'd said, like it was the simplest thing in the world, _"And I'm going to set it back to the way it was."_

"Over my dead body." He practically growled the words, and lashed out with all the power in his possession, supplementing his lack of energy with the white hot rage that had curled itself around his spine. The man shot across the foyer like a bullet, pinned to the wall so hard the wood bowed dangerously against the pressure.

...and then the man had the gall to laugh. At least that was what it sounded like. His face was smashed against the wall only allowing the sound out in muted squawks.

"What do you find so funny?" Chris deadpanned, glaring.

"Puh-" The man squeaked out, still giggling, "Poor choice of words."

Chris pressed him harder in retaliation, "Weird, I don't seem to like your humor."

In a split second, he was there, the next he wasn't, setting Chris drastically off balance as he appeared in front of him again. That weird tense feeling in the air warned him just as the man reappeared behind him, outstretched fingers hovering inches away from his neck. Chris didn't want to know what would happen if that man found skin contact, and didn't want to try it out.

In the spare second between contact Chris used his telekinesis to push himself back and out of reach, skidding backwards roughly into a wall.

The pale man stared, confused, hand still outstretched.

"How did you do that?"

Chris shrugged, "Talent?"

The man's eyes narrowed, "Perhaps."

"Alright, fine," Chris pushed himself up against the wall, limbs feeling heavier by the moment, "So I get you don't like me. Whatever. Could we cut to the why, please?"

The man hunched, looking as annoyed as his face would allow, "You changed what should have not been changed." He spoke, irritated, "It must be set back. This place, these people are pieces, out of place. You, though, you are the hinge of two times. You are the dead walking." He pointed rigidly at him, "I'll fix that. I fix it all."

Chris did not like the sound of any of that.

...come to think of it, he couldn't hear anything.

Not the ambient sounds of the world, not the neighbors clamoring over their hedges to see what the newest disturbance was, not the elders whispering up a storm in the back of his head... not his family.

Chris looked over in a rush, eyes widening as he saw his family all frozen, mid step, angry looks on their faces as they stared at the place the pale man had been standing in moments before.

"...freezing doesn't stop Witches." Chris said disbelievingly.

"Chronokinesis does." The man supplied, voice edging on proud.

"and yet it didn't stop me..." Chris added, regarding the man suspiciously.

The man's eye twitched.

"Perhaps I should go about this another way," He said finally, "I have twelve hours. If one can't get at the hinge... perhaps they should attack the door."

Chris snorted, "You should really find a better metaphor."

"It won't matter in a few hours anyway." The man bowed shortly and the air thinned again, taking away the tense feeling Chris hadn't even realized was still there. In the space of a blink, the man was gone, leaving Chris leaning heavily against the wall and the rest of the Halliwells looking around the room for him, utterly confused.

Piper gaped, fingers pointing vaguely between the empty space she'd last seen her son in and where he now was.

"What the hell was that?" She barked out eventually.

Chris just sighed and sunk back down the wall, "_That_, was a future consequence."

**12:05 pm.**

The man hadn't been expected a challenge.

He hadn't had one in so long, he almost didn't know how to react. He depended so much on his magic that he'd never even attempted an honest fight before. He didn't know why the _meddler_ was immune and he didn't have the time to care. What he did know was that, that it was highly unlikely he'd win a fight against the witch.

If he continued on his usual course, he'd most likely be injured... and he didn't want that at all.

The man paused, mid-thought as he felt time shiver. It was unstable, unsure. He could sympathize. He'd have to keep his powers to a minimum until the witching hour, and no more transporting, the last time had nearly caused a full on earthquake.

He'd have to do all this the old fashioned way.

The man closed his eyes and felt out the turns of time, tracing mental fingers along the lines until they traced back to what he was looking for.

The Halliwells were the first that came to his attention, but he quickly disregarded that idea. Too dangerous and too little of a payoff.

He searched again. Someone out of the way. Someone unsuspecting, but influential.

He stopped and smiled thinly. There. A whole group.

If he set that many souls back on course, time would have no choice but to reset itself. He sensed their prior destinies, and found what he was looking for instantly.

They were all supposed to be dead.

Years ago, he would have felt pity for them. He wasn't slowed by that inconvenience anymore. With a renewed sense of purpose, the man set his course.

**12:15 pm.**

"You can't keep ignoring me."

Piper looked up at the dark haired Phoenix, securely wrapped in a crystal cage, with a look that was so beyond sarcasm it was scary.

"This is my house, and I can do whatever I want in it." Piper informed her, voice so calm it was almost friendly. Friendly, that was, until she made a point to scoot a bright purple vanquishing potion in Bianca's view.

It was only Bianca's considerable pride that kept her from skittering back like a spooked animal. Despite Piper's obvious maternal charm, Bianca found her scarier than anyone (or thing) she'd ever met.

"I thought you said you wouldn't kill me." Bianca said carefully, eyes caught on the small vial.

Piper nodded, closing up a box containing several dozen potion vials. Their emergency, do it all kit, for those occasions where you just didn't know what you were dealing with. Which they very much didn't at this point as the book had come up with nil on their pale stranger.

The eldest remaining Halliwell rolled her gaze over at the Phoenix, brown eyes calculating, "I said we weren't going to jump to any conclusions. That doesn't mean I trust you."

"You don't trust me? Fine. Trust Chris." Bianca said bitterly, "Just talk to him for a second, he'll tell you I'm not going to hurt anyone."

Piper paused, mouth turning downward slightly, "Chris doesn't know you as well as he thinks." She barely spared Bianca another glance as she tied off the last two bags. Then, as if she hadn't said anything mildly weird, Piper flashed a winning smile, told Bianca to make herself comfortable, and left.

Bianca just stood there, stewing in her frustration for a minute. Her fingers twitched at her sides, carefully guided emotions coursing through her veins. She was surprised at herself. A full fledged Phoenix had no emotion. Bianca liked to pretend she was full fledged sometimes, but that emotionless had always been her downfall. She'd never been able to cap those feelings off, and right then, she was feeling some things she'd much rather do without.

She'd expect to be angry, scared perhaps, and she was, but there was an undercurrent to it all. She was disappointed in Piper... and incredibly discouraged. She and Chris were depending on the assumption that the Halliwells would be more accepting. If this was what the easier half of the equation was going to be like, the other half would likely be murder and then their whole plan was shot to hell.

Bianca let out a long calm breath and closed her eyes, "Chris," she said to thin air, "A word?"

She never thought she'd see the sight of someone orbing reluctantly, but that was sure what it looked like. The blue lights were sluggish, coalescing into her boyfriend, looking way worse for the wear. He met her eyes for a second before he quickly wrenched his head to the side, as if burned by the sight.

Bianca just watched, out of her depth, as he seemed to struggle with himself, gradually bringing himself to look back over at her. He let out a tense breath, letting the tension seep out of him before he gestured quickly and sent one of the crystals skidding out of formation breaking the cage with an electrical jolt.

Bianca stepped over the threshold hesitantly, stepping up in front of him, trying to intuit what exact had him so out of character. She didn't get a chance, because as soon as she was within arms reach Chris tugged her into a spine tinglingly deep kiss. When he finally pulled back, her eyelids fluttered girlishly, despite her every intent of being serious for the next few minutes.

"That," Chris said after a second, leaning his forehead against her, "was for saving my life."

"In that case, I don't even think that half covers it." She raised an eyebrow in mock indignation.

Chris grinned and ducked down for another quick kiss, "As much as I'd love to. I'd rather not have to worry about my mother having any small chance of walking in."

"Probably a good idea," Bianca rolled her eyes, "It'd be awkward when she comes back to vanquish me."

Chris snorted a quick laugh, "She isn't going to vanquish you."

"She made a potion." Bianca glared up at him, half serious.

"Don't take it personal. She has one for everything." He shifted a bit and looked at the vial still sitting conspicuously on the table. With a slight look of annoyance, he waved a hand and orbed the potion into the grand canyon where it smashed pleasantly on the rocks below.

"Better?" He added.

Bianca faked considering it, "Hm. The air of doom seems to have lifted somewhat..."

"Yeah," Chris smirked, "Don't get used to that in this house."

Both of them tensed and broke apart as the thumping sounds of footsteps on the stairs reverberated through the floor. Bianca almost laughed at the automatic reflex. The secrecy seemed kind of futile now, their secret was pretty much out as soon as someone took the time to look hard enough. Still, it didn't stop them from waiting silently to make sure no one walked in.

A few anticlimactic moments later, the two relaxed.

"I have to go," Chris sighed eventually, pressing the heel of his palm against his forehead before he turned back to her. He remained silent for a second, choosing his words carefully, "If you see anyone other than Mel or Wyatt... Just, be careful. Don't underestimate _anyone_."

Bianca frowned, able to read more into his words. Chris had always seemed to know that well wishes were more of an insult than anything, and he only used for times when he thought it was needed. He knew full well what she was capable of, and the fact that he felt the need to say it... well, it wasn't a good sign. Suddenly she didn't like the idea of letting him out of her sight.

Instead, she just set her jaw and nodded slowly, "You too."

Chris stepped in and caught her lips again for a deep, bittersweet kiss, fingers whisping across her jaw for a breathless moment before he forced himself to step away.

"If you need me..."

"I'll call." Bianca finished his sentence and shoved him lightly, "Go and be a good guy already. Don't know why you're being so dramatic."

Chris just rolled his eyes and orbed out. The minute he did, the smile fell off her face. She looked around on the floor until her eyes caught on the wayward cage crystal, picking it up.

"Back to captivity..." She sighed, stepped back into the circle, and gingerly dropped the offending crystal back into its spot. Once again locked in a four foot diameter circle, Bianca felt suddenly martyred. She rolled her shoulders and eventually settled down on the floor.

Across the room, silent and wrapped in her own illusion of invisibility, Melinda Halliwell was feeling very... _very_ confused.

**1:00pm**

"I can't do this." Leo slammed the cover on his book shut and shoved it across the table, wedging it between his inbox of term letters and an old picture frame holding the entire crowd that was the current Halliwell family. It had taken them sixteen attempts to keep everyone from blinking and then another three to realize Patricia had wandered off to play with her new puppy. Leo reflexively straighted the frame out and scooted it closer to the others.

"Don't let your students hear that." Phoebe smirked and flipped a page

Leo stared at her a second, the comment taking a second to register, "What? Oh! No. Not researching." He hurriedly commented before sinking back down into his chair, "It's not that, it's... well, you know."

Phoebe quirked an eyebrow.

"Chris..." Leo finished lamely.

"Ah, yeah. That." Phoebe nodded sagely, closing the book in front of her around a bookmark in favor of staring wistfully at the ceiling.

"He remembers, you know."

Phoebe tried really hard not to lurch from her chair in surprise, so it turned out as more of a half hearted jerk, "He told you?"

Leo just shook his head, "No, but I can tell."

They didn't need to say the words to know how true that was. Phoebe didn't even need her empathy to see it. She would know the difference from the very first time that guarded expression dropped on to his face, closing off any hint at the depth of emotion in him and replacing it with pure and bitter business.

The silence dragged, research forgotten.

"Have you..." Leo asked abruptly.

"What?"

He shrugged, and made a gesture at his head in a vague hint at her empathy powers, "_Looked?_"

Phoebe squinted at him suspiciously. It had been a long time since Leo had ever condoned using her empathy on a family member. Phoebe didn't even use it on her own daughters. There lied a fast track to insanity. Leo was usually the very first to understand that. He was the only one who'd had anything similar, back when he was a whitelighter. Privacy meant a lot, and he was the last to try to get around it.

Leo shifted in his seat uneasily, sensing her line of thoughts, "It's just," He sighed deeply, "He hasn't said a word to any of us, hasn't looked at me or Piper in the eye. Well, you know how he can be when he gets upset."

"He bottles it up," Phoebe nodded, getting where he was going with this. "You think he's mad at you."

Leo just nodded glumly. It'd been a major point of worry in the household about what they were going to tell everyone about Chris's little escapades through time. After many, many debates they decided that it was all or nothing, and since they didn't fancy the idea of telling Wyatt he was the ruler of all evil, it would just have to be nothing.

It had been the only secret Phoebe had ever managed to keep a lid on in her whole life, not that she hadn't _really_ wanted to spill it. The only thing that had kept her from it was how Chris would probably react when he found out. She had a feeling he'd be _livid._ The kid had enough issues growing up and she didn't feel like being the cause of more of them.

The door of the office opened and the two adults jumped like they'd been caught at digging through papers at Watergate. Chris stood in the doorway, another stack of books in his arms and a suspicious look on his face he could only have learned from Piper. His eyes danced between the two of them for a second before he slipped to the side and deposited the new books on the table.

"No, I'm not." He said without explanation.

"Not what?" Leo tensed, knowing exactly how hard it was to get through to Chris when he was angry.

Instead, Chris just rolled his eyes, "I'm not mad at you for not telling me. If I'd had the forethought I would have told you to keep it from me in the first place. Believe me, I'd rather have not known."

Leo practically melted into his chair in relief. Phoebe wasn't quite so convinced. Her psychologist senses were tingling something awful. As much as the boy said he wasn't mad, he was lying though his teeth. She slid the book off her lap and sidled over to him, watching him shift books in to piles, movements sharp and annoyed.

"Honey," She patted his arm soothingly, "You want to talk about something?"

Chris slammed a book down noisily, "Not really."

"It'll make you feel better!" Phoebe pressed.

"I'm fine."

"Really? You look kinda mad..."

"No kidding," Chris glared, dropping the last ancient looking book in place, "Why would I be mad? I don't know, the fact that I thought I was done with this? That I'd finally achieved something I thought worth dying for, and let me tell you, dying is _not _fun. Now some freak of a demon walks in and gets the idea to _reset things? _Great! No reason to be mad about that! Oh, and did I mention that these memories are giving me _the _biggest headache I've had in either of my lives not to mention it keeps making me see some _really _messed up stuff when I look at any of you guys. You want to try to explain to Wyatt why I can't look him in the eye? If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them cause I have no fucking clue."

Chris forcibly snapped his jaw shut and glared at the far corner of the room letting the awkward silence soak in.

"That really..." Leo started, slightly shocked.

"Sucks? Yeah." Chris shrugged sharply, he looked over at his family and rubbed a thumb across his forehead, attempting to push the headache back. "I just... I can't let it go back to the way it was. I don't think I could bear it, not after I know how it could be."

"We won't let it." Phoebe rubbed his arm soothingly, an understanding smile spreading across her face, "We're not starting at square one this time. We know what we're up against and we've got tons more books to work with."

Chris allowed himself a small smile at the mountain of books in front of them, "Yeah, seems like Mrs. Donovan took that Google comment to heart. Now all we have to do is actually read them all."

A dark silence settled on the three of them as they eyed the ridiculously thick tomes Chris had brought in. Time travel was so wobbly of a subject that it could give a person a headache simply by association. Reading about it for hours didn't seem like a pleasant idea for any of them.

Then, as if a light bulb came on over Phoebe's head.

"Google, huh?" She mused, fingers quickly reaching across Leo's desk to grab at a pen and paper. A few quick scratches and four lines later, the middle Charmed sister was looking decidedly smug.

"Phoebe, personal gain..." Leo said warningly.

"Hey!" She flicked the pen at him dangerously, "I want to keep this life just as much as Chris does and every second that guy is out there is another second this whole thing could go to hell in a hand basket... Besides, it only a little bit of personal gain." She tossed a look at Chris for backup and he simply shrugged. He'd said his piece on the subject. Leo merely let out a small worried sound before putting his hands up in defeat.

Phoebe grinned, pleased, and straightened out the paper to read.

_"Uncover truth that which once was lost_

_Discover what must be found_

_On ships of knowledge memory tossed_

_Contained in pages bound."_

Chris crossed his arms, amused, "Been taking poetry classes?"

"You like it?" Phoebe grinned girlishly, before casting about the room expectantly. None of the books shifted, not even a single page flip. The two boys pinned her with expectant stares. Phoebe wilted, "Okay, so it didn't work."

Right then a book shot right through Leo's office door, sending oak chips flying like dangerous splintery confetti before the tome connected solidly with Phoebe's stomach, knocking her clean off her feet.

Chris tried, very very hard not to grin, but inevitably failed. He and Leo moved from their spots to stand over the downed Charmed One, book sitting harmlessly on her chest. Phoebe merely grunted shortly.

"Personal gain." Leo said unhelpfully. Phoebe chucked the book at him in response.

Chris tugged on Phoebe's waving hand, pulling her to her feet slowly, "I thought you got all the time travel books!" She winced.

"I did," He shrugged, "I pulled every book in that section."

"Well, ya missed one," She rubbed her stomach sorely, letting go of her nephew in favor of her own footing. As soon as she did, Leo's pulled her over next to him, forcing the book back into her hands.

"Look," Leo pointed, voice thin.

Phoebe looked at him, confused, opening up the plain cover to the first page... and nearly dropped the book.

"Oh oh oh!" Phoebe danced in her spot like a five year old who refused to use her words. "Chris!"

"What now?" Chris sighed.

"You," Phoebe pointed again and then held up the book for him, "Look, look, look."

Chris stared at her like she'd gone insane but eventually his yes focused on the small print.

"What in the..."

There, in plain letters on the first page.

_'Chronokinetics. By Christopher P. Halliwell.'_

**A/N: **

Lastly, the credit for that spell rests solely on my dear friend Kat Morning to which I am a mere poser in comparison. Seriously, go look up her stuff, she's here on ffdotnet.

In retribution for the missing week, the next couple chapters are gonna be crazy long. Lots to say and so little time to say it. Cheers y'all! And please, please keep the reviews a'coming they make my day so happy you have no idea


	6. Promise

Disclaimer: Blah blah. Not mine!

Chapter Six: Promise

**November 16th, 2003. Unchanged Future.**

Chris woke up with a jolt, arms reflexively snapping out to protect himself. Instead all they did was nearly shove him to the dusty floor of P3's back office. In the dim, secondhand light of the club, it took him all the longer to claw his way back to reality. The reality of where and more importantly _when _he was. It was only a moment longer before the default bittersweet feeling descended over him.

It never got easier. He would have thought the months he'd spent in this time would have put some emotional distance between the horrors of his home. You would think... and still. He woke up every single day expecting to open his eyes to some rubble clogged dugout or some halfway collapsed building, terrified awake by the sound of magically augmented drones clawing at the walls. Eventually his brain would catch up and the images of dust clogged holes were replaced with cheap promotional posters and dense stacks of paperwork. The sounds of drones became nothing more then the janitor scraping furniture across the floor.

When he'd first arrived in the past, that realization that he wasn't there anymore, that he didn't have to worry about all that... it was the single most freeing thing he'd ever experienced. He'd wake up each day invigorated and smiling, thinking that this was the day he'd stop it. This was the day he'd find the one responsible, and he'd never have to go back to that wasteland again.

Day by day, though, the feeling wore thin. Every hour that ticked away without finding a scrap of good information was another ten pounds of anxiety squeezing the hope out of him. Every hour lost was a narrowing of the time between the bright world he had the luck to be in and the dark future that it would become. He began to dread that feeling he'd get when he woke up. Like the universe was taunting him.

...and then Bianca had died. Now the best thing about his day was the confusion of waking up. Because now, every time he woke up and thought he was in the past, at least he thought she was alive, if only for a moment.

Chris lied there numbly, reclosing his eyes again and steeling his thoughts. He didn't dare mourn her, that would mean he'd given up. If there was one thing he knew about her, it was that she'd kick his ass if he even thought of doing that. He had to remind himself that she wasn't really dead if he just changed everything. Someday in this new, brighter, future, he'd get another chance with her. He just had to believe he could do it.

Some days it was just so damn hard.

He recognized the weakness as it took over and he didn't have the strength to even put up a fight. All he wanted right then was to see her again, he didn't think he could wait another 20 odd years even _if _he got the chance. Dreams and nightmares still clinging heavily on his mind, Chris reached out with his whitelighter senses, searching out the presence that had always seemed to be there, ever since he first met her. He expected the empty blackness... but what he did feel made his eyes snap open.

Bianca was alive...

He was orbing before he even gave it a proper thought, rematerializing in the blinding daylight of the outdoors. Chris winced, tossing a protective hand up over his eyes, peering through the gaps in his fingers and waiting for the scene to take focus.

It was a playground. He shouldn't be here.

Chris's mind barely had a second to catch up before he noticed the uncomfortable shift in the air signaling someone shimmering behind him. The shallow prick of a blade was at his back a bare moment later.

"What are you doing here?" A crisp voice asked, dark and deadly cold. Chris dared a look back, catching sight of a blonde head of hair and a face he'd only seen in pictures.

"Lynn." Chris muttered in realization, almost forgetting about the athame at his back. Lynn fixed that by pressing the athame a fraction farther in, the tip slicing the material of his shirt.

Chris looked around at the nearly abandoned playground, surprised that she was being so forward with her threats. He soon realized why. The place was neatly fenced in by privacy fences and tall bushes, the only intruders on the obviously well protected space were a group of children playing across a stretch of grass, totally oblivious.

"Answer the question." Lynn stated coldly, "Why are you here?"

"I don't know." Chris answered honestly, almost bitter.

"Bad answer."

Chris lurched forward before she could plant the athame in his back and whirled around, "Look! I just thought someone was here. I was wrong, alright?"

And he knew it. He was wrong to be here. He'd come chasing a ghost on some drowsy, lovesick hope that Bianca had achieved the impossible. Instead, he was meddling with the past again, he should just orb out and be done with it. Still, there was that tug in the back of his head. She was here... somewhere across that field. He kept his eyes firmly focused on Lynn.

Lynn stared at him placidly, "Bianca...you're looking for Bianca."

Chris just set his jaw.

"What is she to you?" The Phoenix pressed, deciding his silence was answer enough.

"Nothing," Chris lied that time, "This was a mistake." He stepped back, hesitating in his orb just long enough to give Lynn a chance. Her hand came down on his shoulder in a split second. She stared him down, eyes intense.

"I saw you two," She said eventually, "You were in my apartment. I saw how you looked at each other. She came back from the future for you. She didn't kill you, although she obviously should have. Don't _lie_ to me boy. She wouldn't tell me, but I am no idiot. That was far from nothing."

Chris tensed, something in the edge of Lynn's voice hitting a familiar chord, and it only took a minute to decode it. Like mother, like daughter. She was just like Bianca, putting up a facade of complete infallible deadliness to cover up something else.

Lynn was afraid.

The Phoenix read Chris' expression easily and dropped all pretense. She asked the thing she'd wanted to know since she saw him appear.

"Is she alive?"

Chris's reaction said it all, and the Phoenix slackened just enough to allow him to step a safe distance away. He should leave and, yet again, he didn't. There, standing in front of him was the only other person in existence who could possibly understand how he'd felt that past week. The sisters tried, they really did, but they were still under the impression that Bianca had died evil. He'd never bothered to correct them simply because he didn't want to relive it.

Lynn's fists balled up and she forced herself to look out at the field. Despite all his effort to the contrary Chris followed her line of site, following that bright sense to where a dark haired girl had stopped mid play to stare at them with sharp eyes.

And that was all it took.

"I'll fix it." He said it and meant it, not because of any new sense of conviction or bravery, but simply because it was true. He didn't have another choice. He didn't flinch at all as Lynn looked at him with newly angered eyes. He met them without fear, inspiration striking him. He buried his hand back in his pocket instinctively, fingers pulling out a small loop of silver. He held it out to Lynn, jaw set. She just stared at it like it was something deadly.

"What is that?" She asked darkly.

"A promise," He returned, "She isn't dead. Not yet, and I _will _keep it that way. This is my promise to you and her. It belongs to Bianca and it always will."

Lynn glared at him, but it didn't scare him anymore. Chris knew that she was banking on him being right just as much as he was. As much as it was killing her, this all was out of her hands, and she just had to trust him. That was that.

In a flash, Lynn snatched the ring from his hand and inspected it.

"Kind of cheap, isn't it," She clucked.

Chris choked out a laugh before stepping back and orbing out.

**November 16th 2027, 12:15**

Bianca twisted the ring around her finger, far past the point of trying to stop the long time habit. She prided herself on being in rigid control of most things but she recognized a losing fight when she saw one. It wasn't too bad of an offense anyway. It was the only tell she had, and few people knew how to decode it because she barely understood it herself. It was an instant stress reducer. A few twists to remind her it was there and the world lost its terrifying edge.

Plus it was a nice distraction if someone was say, _spying _on her. Which there very much was.

It was the displacement in the air that made her curious. Something simple as a breeze wafting past where it definitely shouldn't have. That could be easily explained away. She _was _in a drafty attic, random air currents just happened sometimes. Really though, it was the dust motes that tipped her off. Even though she felt the air move around her the glowing bits of dust in the light beams stayed deadly still, not moving to the air currents whatsoever.

It was a telltale sign of an illusion... and a very good one.

Bit by bit, she picked the room apart, trying to find the spots where things didn't _quite _move how they should and narrowed the illusion down to a space that could neatly hold one five foot three witch... and it was hovering daintily over her shoulder, looking at her.

The assassin textbook said very certain things about just such a scenario. Several, actually. Step one usually had something to do with grabbing the spy in question. Step two related to the removal of vital organs. All very messy, especially when the target was invisible. Despite her aptitude for it, Bianca had never particularly liked killing, as a matter of fact it usually made her feel very, very ill afterwards. On the other hand... she _really _didn't like snoops.

One second Bianca was unnaturally still, the next she'd lunged straight in the invisible girl's direction, coming just short of her, eyes unblinkingly staring her down.

Melinda yelped despite herself, the fear bursting her illusion into a bright shimmer of nonsensicle colors, quite like a popping soap bubble,. For a minute, they just stared at each other, neither quite willing to let the other see any apparent weakness whatsoever. Bianca just slowly settled back into a more natural seating position motioning for Melinda to take the first move. Melinda, after conquering her urge to run out of the room screaming, straightened up and crossed her arms.

"Nice tattoo." Melinda she said finally, forcefully gulping down any unacceptable vocal tremors. Bianca didn't bother to try to cover up the Phoenix birthmark on her wrist. The girl obviously already knew. Instead, she just shrugged.

"Family tradition."

"Hm," Melinda's expression shifted to mock disinterest, "Guess you come from a pretty alternative family, then?"

"You could say that." Bianca deadpanned.

Melinda resisted the urge to gag. As much as she'd ended up going a little left of her own family model, preferring the mortal world, and all the inherent skill in double speak and careful white lies that came with it, she really didn't exactly like the deception. She wasn't the cloak and dagger type, it was just too complicated and twisted for her tastes. She preferred the elegant approach and sometimes... elegant meant that she'd be better served to change tactics.

Time to take a page from Wyatt's book, blunt and honest.

"What do you want from us?"

Bianca's return look was more than a little abrasive, "A chair wouldn't hurt."

"Let me rephrase," Mel pushed, not amused with the older woman, "What do you want from my brother."

Melinda didn't know what she'd expected, but the sudden softening in her expression wasn't it. In that spare second her defenses were completely down. That, or she was a very good actress. The latter being equally possible. Any girl who was good enough to fool Chris would have to be.

Then, just as quickly, Bianca's defenses were back up, arrogance taking over every inch of her body, all except the subtle twist of the ring around her finger. It was a motion Mel didn't miss in the slightest.

"Mel."

The two women didn't jump, but they certainly didn't waste time in identifying the new voice. Wyatt stood in the doorway, hovering with the look of someone who'd been thoroughly snubbed. He sent a meaningful look at his sister and crooked a finger in the direction of the hallway.

Melinda didn't even bother covering up her sigh before she pulled herself up to stand, heels guiding her in Wyatt's direction.

"Don't go anywhere." Wyatt cracked a fake smile at their house guest and tugged the attic door shut behind them. Mel continued past him, getting out of hearing distance before Wyatt caught up. "So? What did you find out."

Mel pinched her lips together, wondering how to go about this. To explain what she'd seen. More importantly, how to keep Wyatt from blowing a twice blessed gasket.

Despite the Sister's explicit orders to leave Bianca to them, Wyatt wasn't about to let a potential demon lurk around behind their backs, especially one he was sure had hurt his brother. In his opinion, you just don't get away with things like that, mother's orders or no. So, she snuck in. Invisibility was one of her more practiced tricks, and there wasn't any harm in going and looking at the woman. She hadn't expected to find Chris up there too. She hadn't expected them to be speaking in those soft affectionate tone, heavily tinged with double meanings and inside jokes. It was the voice of people who knew each other extremely well.

Then they'd kissed. Several times. With that and the ring... well, she could only come to one conclusion. Melinda turned her gaze to her eldest brother and knotted her fingers together nervously. Wyatt was never going to believe her. Hell, Mel was still having a problem believing it.

"What..." Wyatt nudged her in the arm, well aware that she was stalling.

Mel just winced, "Well, she's not a demon."

"Bullshit."

"Really!" Mel cut in, pointing to her wrist, "You know that tattoo? It's actually a birthmark which makes her part of the Phoenix Coven. She's a witch... just a... slightly demon flavored one."

Wyatt frowned, arms crossed, "Demon flavored..."

Mel shrugged grandly.

"Still makes her evil, then, doesn't it?" He nodded, face turning resolute, "I'll go get Excalibur."

"No, no no!" Melinda forcefully grabbed his arm, digging her heels into the floorboards to keep him stationary. Wyatt just turned a confused look at her, seriously considering just dragging her along down the hallway, hooked to his arm.

"What? She's not evil then?" He snapped.

Melinda hesitated a second too long and Wyatt turned back around, pulling her along easily even as she leaned all her weight into stopping him.

"Wyatt! Stop!" She whined, "There's something else!"

The twice blessed rolled his eyes and grudgingly halted. "She's evil! She nearly killed Chris, and she's probably working with that other demon too! I don't see what could matter." Then he turned back in the direction of the attic, done with the conversation.

Mel's heels skidded across the floor and she eyed the carpet bunching up in front of her. Now or never. She tipped her head back and yelped.

"He loves her!"

Wyatt halted, halfway down the hallway, jaw hanging like it wasn't even connected. He turned back, attempted a few words before he stuttered to an awkward, nonsensical end. Mel released his arms, pulling her fingers into a steeple over her mouth.

"At least I think he does." She added lamely, voice muted by her hands. She slid them away nervously. "I mean, it looked that way..."

"Not possible," Wyatt shook his head, "Chris would have... I mean. When would he even have the chance to...He doesn't keep secrets!"

Mel crooked an eyebrow.

"Okay, fine. He doesn't keep them from _me._"

The younger Halliwell just watched dumbly as Wyatt paced up and down the hallway, mind obviously racing. Mel couldn't help but do the same. Each trying to reconcile their own images of their brother with this new information.

"It's a spell." Wyatt said abruptly.

Mel shook her head, "It really didn't look like it."

"Fine," Wyatt tossed his hands up, "Then she seduced him."

Mel shuffled back, face scrunching, "First off, ew. Don't ever put those images in my head again. Second, do you really think Chris would fall for that? He's memorized the Book back and forward, he'd have ID-ed that birthmark in a second."

Wyatt glared at the wall.

A large thud and a crash from the attic sent the two of them running down the hallway at breakneck speeds, Wyatt gesturing the door open even before he reached it. They stopped a few feet in, eyes immediately drawn to a crumpled form on the floor, bare inches away from the still trapped Phoenix in her magic cage.

"Let me out!" Bianca practically growled, hands sparking as they touched the electric bubble around her.

Wyatt stood stock still, blocking the doorway and keeping Mel behind him and carefully gaging the situation. The newcomer, a girl probably young enough to still be in high school, didn't exactly look threatening, as a matter of fact she looked nearly dead. Then again, a bright red mark stood out, painfully obvious on her shoulder, a direct copy of the one on Bianca's arm.

He looked up at Bianca, fighting the immediate urge to heal first and ask questions later, "What happened? Who's she?"

Bianca shook her head sharply "She's just a _kid _Halliwell and she's hurt. Either let me out or heal her!"

The girl shifted on the floor, mumbling inanely before she curled around herself more. Bianca's gaze shot from the girl to Wyatt. If he didn't know better, he could have swore there was an edge of something in her expression, almost a plea.

Wyatt didn't move.

The caged Phoenix seemed to darken, eyes narrowing to slits. In a burst of motion, Bianca's hands shot out and clamped impossibly around one of the warding stones. Lightning arced around her ferociously but anyone could see that it was lessening, the bright magical light of the stone disappearing into her hands until finally there was none left.

Wyatt saw her shimmering the second before she did and shoved Melinda back out into the hallway just in time for Bianca to shimmer back beside him, athame a hairs breadth away from his throat. The room fell still, the only thing moving were the dust motes.

"Heal her." Bianca commanded.

Wyatt snorted and, with a flick of the wrist that closed the attic door, sealed Mel outside in the hallway.

"You could have asked nicely."

**1:15 pm.**

"Oh dear, oh dear..." Mrs. Donovan fluttered back and forth, hands fretting at her cheeks. The library was absolutely choked with dust, loose pages still drifting down from the upper levels. This was the first time in a very long time she could remember being able to see from one end of the library to another, and it wasn't due to any sort of creative decorating, it was because a book shaped hole had been punched through every shelf from the entrance to the demonic flora section.

The librarian squeaked pitifully.

Chris and Leo turned in near unison to pin Phoebe with identical looks of blame. The Charmed One shrank, hands pinned over her mouth.

"Ohmygosh. I am so, so, _so_ sorry!" Phoebe winced widely, not sure how to console the distraught librarian. The woman in question just nodded, slowly, still staring through the hole in the shelf in front of her. Leo patted her on the shoulder wordlessly.

Chris scratched his cheek lightly and leaned to look through the neat line of holes, "Well, I guess it won't be that hard to figure out where the book came from."

Phoebe perked up, "You mean _your_ book."

Chris's return glare wasn't fast enough. Mrs. Donovan had already picked up on Phoebe's words.

"Why Christopher, I wasn't aware you wrote a book!" She looked from him back to the carnage, a small finger pointing from it to him, "Your book did this?"

"I didn't write it!" Chris almost yelled, tired of saying it. "I would have remembered that!"

Leo sighed in his direction, and pushed the book into Mrs. Donovan's hands, "Have you seen this before?"

She stared at it, frowning at the pages, as she flipped through, changing the binding and covers for any other identifying marks, "I'm afraid not. I would have remembered a text of this caliber. This book is near genius, good job Chris!"

"Not my book," Chris sing-songed temperamentally.

The click of heels made the small group turn around just in time to see Piper Halliwell enter the scene, hands hovering dangerously close to her blowing up position.

"Okay, so all the kids are safely in the—WOAH! What happened here?"

Phoebe bounded over to her sister and hooked a stalling arm around her shoulders, "Chris wrote a book."

Piper snapped over to look at him, "You wrote a book?"

"No I didn't." Chris dropped his hands to his sides audibly and stared beseechingly up at the ceiling, "How many times am I going to have to say that..."

"It's really quite complicated." Mrs. Donovan ignored him, offering the book to a confused Piper. She took it gingerly, fingers pulling at it like it would eventually explode. With each page flip, though, her mouth dropped open wider.

"Holey moley," Piper commented, eyes wide, "You aren't kidding. What the heck does polychronatic supplefication mean anyway?"

Phoebe peeked over Piper's shoulder and whistled, "Dude, I don't even know how to pronounce that word."

Soon, all four of them were hovering over the thing, attempting to figure out what any of it meant and how many points the words would count for in scrabble. Outwardly, Chris maintained a look of complete and utter deadpan annoyance, arms securely crossed. Inwardly... he wasn't quite as disintrested. The four of them tossed out words, bits of equations, and various names, each one catching his attention more than the last.

He hadn't written it. He would have remembered... but it didn't change the fact that most of the things they were saying were actually making sense.

There'd always been an idea in the back of his head that science and magic could go hand in hand, and the more he listened, the more it seemed right. The way the modern day theories of quantum mechanics seamlessly intertwined with magical theories on portals... well, it just made so much sense.

As he thought, old memories from his previous life threatened to push forward, the sound of drones, the holographs, old schematics in the basement of the Halliwell manor. He forcefully shoved them back, having no urge to relive that part of the timeline.

Reluctantly, Chris stepped back over to where his family was clustered around the book.

"Can I see that for a second?" He winced as Phoebe cracked a smile at him.

"Sure! It's your book." She twisted the tome and held it out.

"It is n- You know what, _whatever._" Chris grabbed the thing and fanned through the pages, catching chapter titles, each one more interesting than the last. It took almost all of his self control to wrench his attention from it, instead he turned to the trial of holes leading back to the corner of the library. He recognized that corner of the library. It was where he always sat... where he _had _been sitting this morning and where he'd seen that crazy pale man the first time. Instantly, something snapped into place.

The pale man had been reading this book.

Chris eyed the broken spine of the book and tilted the book to its side, letting the book open to the most used chapter. The chapter title was in bold: "Paradox Windows. Affecting imbalances in time and guiding magical selection of specific timelines." Chris suddenly felt sick to his stomach as he read further.

"...We're screwed."

**A/N: **Sixteen scrabble points to someone who can guess what Polychronatic Supplefication means. Alright! Here ends the chapters that were already sorted out. The new stuff shall be starting henceforth. Thank you all for your patience in the transfer and with me in general.


	7. Phantom Pains

Disclaimer: Blah blah. Not mine!

Chapter Seven: Phantom Pains

**November 17th, 2021. 2:00 pm**

Chris leaned on the door frame heavily, rubbing a hand along the ridge of his shoulder in an attempt to get rid of the phantom pains. That was the only downside of healing, even after all the damage was gone, the mind took a while to catch up, and right then, his whole body felt like one big bruise. He gave up trying to get rid of the feeling after a second, eyes going back to the door in front of him. The door was modest, matte black with frosted glass, out of the way in the back of the High School's staff wing. The only thing differentiating it from a janitor's closet was the humble and yet utterly terrifying name plate on one side. Chris leaned toward the glass, hoping that no one was actually home, but, sure enough, he could see shapes moving behind frosted glass. The feeling of remorse he'd been holding back chose that time to wash over him, he accepted it and knocked on the door shortly.

The sound of a chair scraping across carpet, a single, hummed bar of a song too old for Chris to recognize, and the door open, revealing a slightly bent old woman. Her lips stretched into a patient smile, eyebrows arcing quizzically over old librarian glasses. She was a small woman and looked to be at an age where the only thing that kept her spine from curving was sheer iron will. She leaned against the door, looking a mite smug.

"Mr. Halliwell? Well, strike me dead and call me Betsy, I never though I'd see the day you were on time for something." She clucked her tongue and gestured him into her office. Chris just rolled his eyes at the statement and tucked his hands into his pockets. He didn't let her words get to him. As always, the stern edge to her words were tinged with a good deal of sarcastic humor if you knew where to look. Sarcasticly rude was the old teacher's natural state of being, something they had in common.

Her name was Ms. McCaffey: The scariest person ever on staff at his high school. She was the one that freshman knew about before they even arrived, rumors of her hauling kids three times her size out of classrooms or verbally eviscerating kids who thought they were too smart to show a modicum of respect to their elders. Well, those sorts of stories had always drifted from old to younger sibling. Chris was no exception. He could clearly remember the look on 14 year old Wyatt's face after he'd been called into Ms. McCaffey's office. No one had bothered to ask why Wyatt had landed himself there, and after one look at his horrified expression, Piper didn't bother either. She figured that anything that could terrify the twice blessed was punishment enough.

Chris's experience with the woman wasn't much different at first, but only for a while. Chris had never been the model student. His grades were always mediocre at best as demon attacks made it hard to schedule study time. "Family Emergencies" riddled his attendance record like swiss cheese. Then there were the spell backfires... especially the one that turned the principal into a jackalope. Things just never seemed to work in his favor, so none of the teachers particularly expected much from him.

All except Ms. McCaffey. She didn't take his luck as an excuse, she expected excellence and nothing less, and she pushed him for it. She was probably the only reason his grades were in the state they were currently, and also the only reason he hadn't been expelled after that whole getting arrested thing the year prior. Chris overheard that little talk she'd given to Principal Calliger and it went something along the lines of, "if you expel that boy over something this asinine I will call your mother, young man, and I'll give her a piece of my mind."

Principal Calliger had slunk out of that conference with his tail between his legs and Ms. McCaffey had followed shortly after. All she did was crook an eyebrow in Chris's direction and say, "I hope the coppers allowed you to study for the upcoming test while you were incarcerated, otherwise you are now a day behind schedule." It had been the most heartwarming thing he'd heard all month.

For some reason that was totally beyond him, Ms. McCaffey saw greatness in him, and she would accept nothing less than that. That was why this was going to hurt...

"Well," she said after easing gingerly into her chair and retrieving a slim folder from one side of her desk, "You would have seen this sooner or later, but I see no reason to stall." She turned the folder around and tapped a finger on the top. "Look now, and revel at the glory."

The air in his lungs flashed out, "I got a perfect score... " He said in pure amazement, time seeming to freeze as he stared at the test results. He snatched it out of her hand a little more eager than he was intending to, "No way." He scanned the summary sheet under the number, trying to see if it was somehow faked. He'd been half asleep when he took that test, and he really hadn't been expecting much of anything to come from it. He lifted his gaze to look at the very smug woman across from him.

"If you were any other kid, I'd be alarmed by your surprise." She tapped at her desk with a stray pen, "But then again, if anyone were smart enough to cheat, I think they could have passed it anyway. Congratulations Halliwell, you know what this means right?"

She took his shocked silence as a sign for her to continue, "This means you'll be able to go to the colleges you _deserve_ to go to, even with your current GPA. Granted, you'll still have to work around your 'criminal' record, but since that's all really local business at this point I think you'll be able to pull it off if you look out of state. You know, Harvard, MIT, Etcetera." She leaned back, looking supremely pleased.

Chris stared at the results a moment longer before quietly shutting the folder and putting it back on her desk. "I can't."

She frowned, "Why the hell not?"

He didn't quite manage to meet her eyes, "Something came up." The phantom pains of recent injuries taunted him. His birthday had been as eventful as advertised. So eventful it had made the last couple years seem tame in comparison. This birthday had come with teeth, and the teeth hadn't been coming for just him this time, they'd been coming for _all _of them.

"Hogwash!" Ms. McCaffey snorted, _"'_Things coming up' is simply not a good enough excuse. You're too smart and you've worked too hard to let something get in your way. You deserve more than the direction you're heading."

Chris stared at a particularly interesting bit of wall, eyes narrowed, "Yeah, well sometimes '_things_' are more important." He wasn't really concentrating on the conversation at hand. The memories were filtering in already He could hear the girl's screaming even now. The attack had been so well orchestrated, so smart. They'd went after the younger Halliwells first, Trisha and the twins, to keep Wyatt and Paige out of the fight, too busy healing to participate until the last second... then the demons struck where it hurt most.

Chris forced his eyes closed for a second and looked back over at Ms. McCaffey who was looking at him with narrowed eyes, not quite suspicious, more concerned. He felt the guilt seep back in and sighed.

"Regardless of what those test scores were going to be, I wanted to come in today to thank you... and apologize." He pressed the words, trying to fit in as much genuine meaning as he could, "You've done a lot for me, and you don't know how much that means."

...The walls had been scorched by the time Chris had woken up, back raw from a well aimed energy ball. Mel was quietly bleeding up against one wall, Henry Jr. wrapped protectively in her arms. One of the demons, skin black as pitch and riddled with fluorescent green veins, was standing over an unconscious Wyatt, Excalibur gleaming in its claws. The demon raised its arms, Chris tried to work feeling back into numb body, the sword came down-

Chris flung him across the room with a force he didn't know he was capable of. He was on his feet and on the demon in less than a second, using his telekinesis to speed up his movements. From there on his memories became fuzzy. The next thing he knew, his mother was talking to him in a soothing voice, trying to pull a demon gore covered Excalibur from his hand. He'd lost an hour, and somehow the rest of the demons found themselves inexplicably vanquished. The demons hadn't taken him into account, none of the demons worried about weak little Christopher...

"I can't leave now." Chris looked down at his hands in his lap. If he hadn't been there... if he had been across the continent, sound asleep in a dorm room at some upscale college, oblivious... "My family is more important."

Ms. McCaffey regarded him quietly, hands folded in front of her. She waited until Chris had the guts to look at her directly before speaking and when she did, her voice arrived with the same dry sense of humor he'd grown to expect of her, "If I hadn't of met your parents, I'd think you were part of the mafia, Mr. Halliwell."

Chris cracked a laugh, despite himself, "Sometimes I think that would be easier." He admitted, half smiling.

The old counselor gave a tired sigh and slouched, "Promise me one thing, Halliwell." She pinned him with a steely gaze.

"What?"

"One day, when 'things' don't keep getting in the way." She air quoted the word with an eye roll, "Don't let your talents go to waste. You're meant for great things."

After a moment, Chris got up from his chair, reaching across the desk to shake her hand, "Glad at least one person thinks so."

**November 16****th**** 2027 1:20**

Most of the time, the members of the Phoenix Coven weren't exactly the rowdiest crowd by any standards. They were capable of it, sure. Phoenixes were capable of anything. They were experts at blending, at fitting into the cracks of their target's lives, pretending they had the emotional capacity to care about their targets up until the moment the contract needed to be completed. It was why they remained in demand. Some demons may appear normal, but they didn't have the first clue about the social skills required to slip into normal society. Sometimes these things required finesse, and if that was what Phoenixes were made for.

It was only on their occasional get-togethers that the Phoenixes allowed themselves to return to their natural state: calm, serene, and with as few emotional disturbances as possible. The most hectic things about these meetings was usually only a harsh whisper from parents to children who hadn't quiet caught on to how the world worked.

Even knowing all that, Bianca found herself breathless at the utter silence of the place, the only disturbance being the sound of her shimmering in quickly followed by the wind chimes of the wayward Halliwell on her heels. She shot a look over at her should just as Wyatt solidified.

"No one told you to follow me." She said coldly, conjuring an athame into her hand. Wyatt returned the look, entirely unimpressed, gesturing at the sky. Excalibur appeared in a short second, dropping into his palm out of a cloud of orbs.

"I think mine is bigger than yours." Wyatt smiled sharply and spun the blade once, adjusting the grip. Bianca just stared at him blankly for a moment, almost disbelieving at the sheer amount of frustration one man could cause. The only thing keeping her from stabbing the "almighty twice-blessed" was her thin grip on her own self control. She was pretty sure Chris would forgive her if she only wounded him superficially.

"Charming." She ground the word out before dismissively turning her back on him, set on continuing down the hallway they'd appear in, steps measured and quiet.

Wyatt followed behind her, keeping to her lead on the silence. The hallway they were in was impressive, imposing black support beams arched up into the ceilings to meet at the center, a light fixture resembling the mark on Bianca's arm hung suspended from the top, glowing with an ominous red light. The stretches of walls between the beams weren't so much walls as long, continuous runs of complicated stained glass. The tinted pieces were carefully worked together to form stories Wyatt had no real context for, black iron framework laced in between to give structural support. He examined one closer, he noticed one thing they had in common as he pointedly stared at a mosaic depicting a Phoenix witch holding up what looked to be a severed human head... none of these stories were peaceful.

Wyatt cast a carefully suspicious look at the witch walking in front of him and at the surroundings. She seemed to have dismissed him fully, either thinking he was too dumb to catch on or she was just too busy to care. Despite his jokes, Wyatt wasn't oblivious. He knew trouble when it looked him in the face. Much like magic school this place was enchanted, however the feel was entirely different. Magic school's wards felt clean and comforting. This place felt oily and just... wrong, sinister.

_'Ah, Chris,'_ Wyatt thought to himself, grip tightening on Excalibur, _'What have you gotten yourself into?'_

He looked back up front just in time to catch Bianca narrowing her gaze at him, he stared her back down, unflinching. Then came the boom.

An old man, dark skinned and gray haired, flying out of one of the side rooms, propelled by a massive explosion that melted the stained glass into puddles of muddy goo. He hit the floor, sliding across the expensive marble flooring until he pushed up against a support column and finally stopped. Bianca was next to him in a flash, forgetting every inch of her training. She buried her fists in the man's coat, having dropped her athame a couple steps back, and flipped him over.

"Oh no," she whispered to herself, running a hand over the old man's face, "Grandfather,"

She didn't need to test, there was no life in his eyes, just terror. She closed them gently and laid him down on the floor, only then whipping around to stare at the smoking frame where a door used to be, melted by her late Grandfather's power over fire. There, standing in the center of the wreckage, completely unharmed, was the pale man, thin and seemingly inconsequential.

The Pale Man looked at them with the barest hint of amusement, lip twitching in a not-quite-smile. Then he turned on a heel and started walking away from them. Even that wasn't normal. As he walked, he seemed to blink in and out of existence like a strobe light that was slightly out of sync. As Wyatt watched him go he felt a rage build up under his skin. He didn't know who or what this guy was, but regardless of that, no one got away with messing with his family.

By the time Wyatt climbed to his feet, the Pale Man reappeared at the end of the hallway in front of a set of large black double doors. Bianca was next to him bubbling with the same black rage as he was, and they charged after him in near unison.

**1:20 pm. (Library)**

"When time changes, it isn't a neat fix. It's like busting open a door. Sure you get to where you need to be, but things don't fit back together like they used to when you're done." Chris leaned against the library desk, trying to explain something even he didn't fully comprehend yet. His parents and aunts sat in front of him, grim faced but attentive, the first time in either of his memories he could remember having them defer to his expertise.

"After we changed time, it was the same way, it didn't quite fit back together. The two timelines were forced to run side by side. This one, which is actually progressing, and the old one, which is more of a phantom timeline. It's there, but it's not effecting anything. It's just waiting there until the last part falls back into place and the timelines can merge back together."

Leo nodded in understanding, wrapping an arm around Piper's shoulders "And it's doing that right now."

"Yeah," Chris shrugged, "Or it did a couple hours ago with the whole almost dying ag-" he quickly stopped at the looks on his family's faces. Apparently they weren't quite ready for flippant comments about dying yet. "Moving on. Let's just say that I was the only thing keeping them separate, until an couple hours ago, I was still out of sync. If things were able to go on as they were supposed to, that would have been the end of it. The times would have settled back together and I wouldn't have to be dealing with this shi—sorry mom, this _stuff _all over again."

Phoebe choked down a smile, "So what's the problem then, professor?"

Chris only took a moment to roll his eyes at that, "The problem is with this... _guy. _Whatever he is, demon, warlock, whatever. As far as I can tell from his psychotic ramblings, he seems to think time was better the way it was before. He wants to change it back." He had to stop his own growl of frustration at that sentence. That anyone thought they had the right to mess with all the work he'd done, what he'd _died _for... Chris let out a thin breath before pressing on to the most important part, "The problem is that, for a little while, it's possible for him to. In this first twenty four hours, time is at its most vulnerable. It's not done knitting together yet and can be reverted if you press the right triggers."

"And those would be?" Piper ground out in her best deadpan sarcasm, already anticipating the answer.

Chris winced inwardly, "The easiest way? Well..."

"They'd have to kill you." Paige said softly, everyone in the room could practically feel Piper's eyes narrow dangerously, hand latching onto Leo's. Chris gave a half nod, half shrug, not quite resisting the urge to smile at the terrifying force that was Piper when her children were threatened. It was more than a little comforting knowing that your mother could make anyone who would like to do you harm spontaneously explode.

"But," Chris added finally, "As we can all see, he failed at that. Whatever he was trying to do didn't work. I don't think he was ready for a fight at all. He's too used to hiding behind his powers. I don't think he wants to deal with that again, so he'll probably go to plan B... and, yeah, this is where the doomed part comes in. I don't exactly know what Plan B is.

The theory is that he just has to find a way to make this current timeline more like the previous one. The easiest way to to that is to find people in the old timeline who are supposed to be dead and well... re-kill them. The problem is, with the old timeline being what it was... pretty much everyone is supposed to be dead."

**1:25 pm**

The two witches threw the double doors open, casting looks around the room for the small man. He wasn't there, but the room was far from empty. Strewn all across the room were bodies, blood slicking the elaborate marble floor and tinging the inlaid mosaic of a phoenix even darker. Bianca's breath froze in her lungs as she recognized each face, eyes catching on the red marks displayed proudly on their bodies. Much more proudly than Bianca had ever allowed herself to be. Some had large bleeding gashes, some were dotted with what looked like arrow wounds though there were no arrows to be seen. Some of them just looked ill, like they'd been that way for years, cheeks sunken in, skin tight over bones. Some weren't even dead yet, but dying nonetheless.

Careful keeping her panic beneath her skin, she scanned the crowd for one specific figure... and she found her. One blonde head among them. "MOM!" Bianca crossed the space with precision, not disturbing a single person on the floor until she found herself, yet again, cradling a member of her family. Wyatt watched her, knowing it was futile. He could sense it from where he stood.

"Did you realize..." A voice broke into the room, bodiless and seeming to come from everywhere at once. Wyatt spun Excalibur around in his hand, glaring at the room, looking for the owner of the voice. He didn't really have to guess. A voice that creepy could only belong to the pale man. Bianca's glare was a great deal more venomous, fingers curling into claws.

"Realize what?" Wyatt answered, impatient. The voice chuckled in return.

"Realize that you've been cheated?" The voice spoke. Wyatt spun to look at empty air even though he was sure he sensed someone there a moment before. "Your family has been promised time, and time, and time again that it would have peace...That the fight for good and evil will be finished."

Wyatt kept silent, he knew when the time for jokes was, and this was not it. He kept tuned in, senses stretched out to catch that glimpse of presence he'd felt.

"Could you imagine a place where that exists? Where good and evil are no more, where you can have your own slice of utopia?" The voice asked almost innocently, wistfully. Wyatt just listened, eyes narrowed. "Imagine, your own Camelot. Pristine, crimeless, where demons no longer hunted innocents, where witches are known. Magic is no longer feared, no longer _hidden. _Where your family and all those who spent their lives defending the innocent are known as the heroes they truly are?"

Even through her current black temperament, Bianca was listening to the words. She used the time to refine her anger to a fine, clean edge, every muscle tense. She spared a second to stare at the Eldest Halliwell. This was all obviously targeted at him, and, to be honest, some of the words even sounded good to her ears... that was a world where all her problems would disappear. Where she wouldn't have to be a phoenix and she could be with whoever she wanted. Still, it didn't cloud her judgment at all, she was still going to eviscerate the man the minute he was brave enough to show his face. Wyatt though, she didn't know him, and she wasn't quite sure he was able to draw the line so succinctly. He sure as hell didn't seem to be denying anything.

"Now imagine, that the utopia you have created was ripped from you. Its existence erased, you wouldn't even have the memories of it to comfort you. Your life's work, gone. Poof!" The man giggled at himself, "It happened, Wyatt. You don't even know it. It was happily taken from you by someone you thought you could trust."

For the first time, Wyatt spoke, eyebrows raising up, "Who's that?"

"Your _brother._"

Wyatt swung Excalibur in an arc of light, the bare metal coming down just beside the Pale Man as he materialized, embedding itself into the wall. The Man was frozen, wide eyed. Wyatt just glared at him.

"If you _ever _think you could possibly turn me against Chris you are absolutely insane." Wyatt growled before tearing the sword to the side, but the Pale Man was gone by the time he did.

"Oh well," The voice said cheerfully, "I should at least thank you for bringing the last Phoenix to me. Now I can set things right." The whispers of the cold feeling Wyatt associated with the man pinged on the edge of his radar once again, completely across the room. He didn't even have time to turn before Bianca felt the slight shifting of the air behind her and the press of a finger against the back of her neck.

**1:25 pm (Library)**

The people in the room didn't notice it the first time, the slight imperceptible shift in the air. It was merely a bit of static in the world, like two radio frequencies crossing over, battling for dominance. It lasted only a bare second. Chris fought the shiver creeping up his spine, eyes narrowing. He hadn't seen it, but he had felt it. His eyes flicked around the room, into the vaulted cathedral ceilings, looking for any sign.

"Something's wrong." Piper stated, no question in her voice at all. She hadn't sensed it, but she didn't need to, she could read her son easier than any book. She stepped beside him and put a comforting hand on his shoulder, face calm and as ready for whatever life might pitch at them. It was something he'd realized they had in common a long time ago. That cool, unblinking, deadpan approach to the dangers they faced. The temperament that made people who didn't know them very well think they were heartless, cold. The Halliwells knew better by now. Piper and Chris just had their priorities in order. There was always time to panic later, to do so now would just keep them from doing what needed to be done.

Chris gave her a sideways look, smiling warily, "There always is, isn't there?"

The world shifted again, the well lit library flickering into a dark parody of what it was. The walls were scorched, the shelves all but empty of books. Instead, the remnants of burnt pages were scattered across the floor so thick you couldn't see the stone underneath it. The only light in the room was the sight of the red sky coming in from artificial windows, meant to look like the world outside.

A few seconds later, it flashed back, returning them to the comparatively pristine conditions of the library, even with its current spell caused carnage. For a short second, no one spoke, too shocked to say anything.

"It was one of the first things he did," Chris said lowly, "Destroy the school... and everyone in it."

Phoebe stared up at the ceiling, face grim "We have to stop this..."

"I will..." Chris almost growled the words even as a something tugged on the edges of his whitelighter senses. It was barely a whisper, he almost didn't hear it over the blood thumping in his ears. He concentrated on it, pulling the sense forward and felt ice flood his veins. "Bianca."

**A/N:**

Little delay here because this chapter decided it didn't like how it had been written and demanded me to fix it. It's still short, but this is pretty much the beginning o' the madness. As always, reviews are gold and I'd love you forever for them.


	8. And We Will Be Again

Disclaimer: Blah blah. Not mine!

Chapter Eight: And We Will Be Again.

**November 16th 2027 1:30 pm.**

Bianca was familiar with blood. She had to be, and not for the reason people would immediately believe. It was the very first thing you were taught as a young member of their coven. She'd stitched up her first wound on her mother when she was six, popped the first bone back into place at eight, mixed numerous healing salves and curative potions all through her life. Being a witch was always dangerous, no matter what you chose to do with your powers. However, unlike normal witches, Phoenixes weren't allowed to have whitelighters. The elders didn't approve of them, didn't like that they could shimmer, didn't like that they judged the world on a case by case basis, that their morals didn't quite align. There was never the hope of a gold healing glow for her...

An ice cold feeling shot down her spine and then all she knew was pain. When she looked down at the new wound, a jagged hole in her stomach, well, she thought it was over. No one could fix this. The Pale Man stood between her and Wyatt. Every time the twice-blessed made an attempt to help or to take a swipe at him, the Pale Man would disappear and reappear, keeping Wyatt away. She scoffed inwardly, not at Wyatt really, just at the situation. She knew it by sight, the man was just toying with them. She pressed her hand to her stomach and found herself falling slowly sideways, unintentionally falling just next to her mother. She heard Wyatt growl in frustration and felt the blood ooze through her fingers. Hopeless. All hopeless.

_Haven't we been here before?_

The words faded into her brain, images of a cold attic and someone holding her hand. Despite the cold atmosphere of the images, she felt suddenly warm.

_And we will be again..._

Awareness snapped into her blood deprived brain. Phoenixes weren't allowed to have whitelighters... but she did. Before the blood seeping out of her took the last of her awareness from her, she whispered his name.

**1:31 pm**

Chris detached himself from his mother's grip without an explanation and orbed blindly, shooting for the sense in the back of his mind. He hit the floor clumsily, crashing to his knees next to Bianca, the scene coming into sharp focus. He recognized the wound in her stomach in a painful flash of memory, he recognized it even without the shard of wood angling out of it. His eyes flickered to the bodies around. Phoenixes he recognized from the war, each dead of an injury he had either heard about or witnessed personally. All from their other lives, like they'd been plucked out of that time and transported onto these bodies.

Chris pressed a hand to the side of Bianca's face, her eyes opened for a bare second, hazy with pain. He didn't waste any more time. He couldn't heal her, Wyatt could, and that asshole was keeping him from doing it. The sense was there before he even consciously called for it. The same feeling that he'd used the last time he'd met the Pale Man. He could feel the stretch and ping of reality around them, feel the Man's power, feel time bend.

He waited a second just after the man disappeared again, and launched up, planting himself firmly between the man and Wyatt just before he reappeared. With a violent slash of a hand, Chris sent the Pale Man skidding across the floor, the only thing that kepd him from crashing noisily against the far wall were the bodies that kept slowing him down.

"Chris, what are you-" Wyatt managed to get out before Chris cut him off.

"No time." He growled and used his telekinesis to push Wyatt in Bianca's direction, "Heal her. _Now._"

Wyatt just nodded somberly and obeyed, winding over to where the last breathing phoenix lay just in time for the Pale Man to reappear in front of Chris, hand extended. Chris knocked the hand away with his powers, suddenly focused on that movement as he saw his own arm flash up, showing the bandage wrapped around it. It was the first time he'd really looked at it since it happened, and the memories from his past life flowed forward to meet the sight.

It was in the last two years he was in that hell world, Wyatt wanted a show of power, he wanted to flood the last bits of any rebellious minds away from his utopia. He was going to use a blood spell. He was going to call on the Halliwell line to do his dirty work. Bianca warned him, tried to get him to hide in Valhalla, but he couldn't. He made a counter spell, and it required blood, and lots of it to compensate for the power difference.

The memories played like a bad slide show and faded, leaving him with only the memory of when he'd first met the Pale Man in the library. When Chris had stepped around him to leave, he hadn't noticed the man brush a finger against his arm just before it happened. That's why it wouldn't heal. The wound _was_ self inflicted, just from an entire other lifetime.

"That's what you do." Chris said mostly to himself, watching the Man climb up from where he'd been knocked to the floor, "You make past injuries appear in the present." Just with a touch. He was part amazed and part just buying time. Even though Chris somehow (and he wasn't about to look that gift horse in the mouth) had some foresight into what the man was doing, he couldn't keep this up for long. He just needed to go long enough for Wyatt to heal Bianca and them to get out.

"Past injuries, Alternate injuries, Future injuries. All the same." The Pale Man giggled insanely and demonstrated the process with his hands, "As long as they are at the correct place to bend!"

Chris stole a look over to Wyatt, seeing the gold glow washing over Bianca, the wound was closing painstakingly slow. He clued back into the Pale Man's motions a moment too late as he moved past him, becoming a silver streak in sped up time as he darted past Chris and towards Bianca, his fingers inches away from her and his brother. Chris damned the consequences and tackled the small man, orbing them both out and across town before they hit the floor.

Neither of them had the agility to recover from the fall, they both tumbled into the new scenery, rolling across cracked asphalt before they came to a painful halt. Chris didn't move for a moment, he was too concentrated on getting rid of the bright sparks behind his eyes that had nothing to do with the orbing. The pale man didn't seem quite as shaken up or maybe he was and just couldn't find it in his twisted mind to care. He was flat on his back a few feet away, giggling at the sky, bouncing his heels against the ground in a childish motion.

Chris glared at him, "You're insane..."

This made the man giggle more, "Clarity is often confused for insanity." He intoned wisely, "I see the way the world works, the rest are meddlers like you."

Chris twisted so he could attempt to get up, two severely bruised ribs complaining as he did. He didn't give a damn. He just wanted to see how the little insane bastard would "see the world" if he got his head smashed in with a rock. He didn't get a chance. Just as he sat up, the world shifted again. The empty parking lot they were sitting in changing into something altogether more beautiful and frightening at the same time.

What once was dirty asphalt turned into pristine white slabs of tile. The small islands of grass were replaced with strategic and perfectly placed hedgerows dotted with manufactured flowers and vines that crept up carefully controlled latticework. The broken riverside warehouses were no longer rusty boxes but sweeping architectural master works brimmed in by high walls dotted with video screens bigger than semis every ten feet. Screens that were proclaiming the wonders of the modern world. It was probably the most beautiful city in the world.

Chris was terrified of it.

"Hah ah!" The Pale Man crowed from his spot on the ground, "Many apologies on the passing of your friend. It seems I have won."

Chris was up on his feet in a flash but he knew that the Pale Man would be gone by the time he got there, disappearing to god knows where. He slammed his fists down in the spot anyway, falling to his knees in frustration, forehead to the stone floor, fists clenched at his temples.

"_While the war rages outside of our doors, Camelot keeps us safe."_

He pressed his hands over his ears and clenched his eyes shut, trying not to hear the woman speaking on the screens. He couldn't be here, this wasn't happening again. This was just another temporary shift, he still had time. He just had to wait for it to shift back. It didn't.

"_Please be on the lookout for any rogue witches or those who conspire with them. If you do, please call this number and a witch retrieval team will arrive shortly."_

If the world didn't shift back, that meant Bianca was dead... again. The irony wasn't lost on him. He'd promised her they'd be here again, and they were, to near identical proportions. She was dead and he was failing. He was getting so tired of failing...

"_All praise the Halliwell name as it protects us in these harrowing times."_

Chris pulled his hands away from his ears and sat up, face impassive as he stared out around him, entirely unsurprised to hear the sound of shimmering clog the air. He looked up as the demons circled around him, not giving them the slightest hint of what was running through his head.

"I guess you guys are the retrieval team?" He told them conversationally, the situation making him sort of giddy. They just frowned at him. His head was swimming, his whole body ached, there was an open hole where his hope had been... funny thing though, his will to fight was still entirely intact. Chris climbed up to his feet slowly giving the closest demon an only slightly psychotic smile. "Just try it, I dare you."

**1:35**

Wyatt leaned into the healing, dredging up every spare emotion and feeding it into the process. It was going slow, way too slow, and the feeling was familiar. It was the same feeling he'd gotten when he'd tried to heal Chris, like there was just something in the way, some invisible barrier that was keeping him from what he was supposed to do. He felt defeat sneaking up even as he kept trying to heal. The only thing that had saved Chris last time was the combined healing powers of him and Paige and he didn't have that now, he didn't even have his full energy.

Bianca's eyes slid shut, head listing to the side and the world seemed to fall with it. Wyatt felt the shift as it happened, the room subtly changing. The bodies and blood surrounding him disappeared, the room went through small almost imperceptible changes, desks switching positions, bookshelves filling with books that weren't there before. The lack of bodies should have lifted the foreboding feeling in the room but, to Wyatt, it only felt more sickly. Just as soon as the shift finished, the barrier blocking his healing disappeared with the rest of it and, like someone letting go of one end of a tug of war rope, Wyatt fell into the healing with more power than usual. The wound in the Phoenix's stomach closed almost immediately and Bianca dragged in a ragged breath, hand snapping out to latch onto Wyatt's, fingernails digging in the skin of his forearm reflexively.

Wyatt looked down in confusion at the pain, he'd been wearing long sleeves before. He looked down at himself, noticing the pitch black outfit he was wearing, he felt the tickle of hair along the sides of his face seeing out of the corner of his eyes that it reached down to his chin, then he looked back down at Bianca. Somewhere in the time he'd been healing her, her appearance had changed drastically as well. Her hair was shorter and her outfit, well, it certainly left less to be imagination, black leather with silver buckles that didn't entirely close the gap.

He stared down at her with the same confusion he could see reflected back in her face about him. He opened his mouth, trying to figure out something to say, but he only succeeded in mumbling a curse that would have had his mom slapping him upside the head.

"You've got that right, at least," Bianca said in breathless agreement, sitting up slowly from her spot on the floor and looking around, "Something is very very wrong."

"Isn't there always?" Wyatt sighed heavily in exasperation, standing up and wordlessly offering a hand to help Bianca the rest of the way up. To her credit, she only gave him a mild look of annoyance before she accepted it, this wasn't the time to pick fights.

Bianca stared around the room, noting the changes piece by piece before she tossed a look back to Wyatt, "Is this some kind of Halliwell thing?"

Wyatt raised an eyebrow, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know," Bianca tossed her hands up, "You Halliwells have _things_. Things happen to you that don't happened to anyone else. I just though you might have some kind of past experience with this."

"Experience with what? Spontaneous costume changes, disappearing bodies, shifts in reality?" Wyatt snapped his mouth shut at the look Bianca was giving him. "Well... okay, _sometimes _yes. Not all the time. It's not a _thing._" Wyatt crossed his arms and refused to act like a petulant kid. He didn't know what it was about this Bianca chick but she just had the habit of rubbing him the wrong way. Nothing good had happened since she'd shown up and it just didn't feel right taking crap from someone who was even mildly demon flavored, no matter what Mel had said.

Wyatt stopped then, feeling like the floor had dropped out from under him. Bianca noticed immediately, stepping a little closer, "What is it?"

"I can't sense Mel," Wyatt breathed the words in disbelief and cast his senses out farther. He couldn't sense anything really. Even the ever present hum that was the elders was conspicuously missing. He didn't even know how that was possible. "I can't sense anyone..."

The door banged open behind them without any preamble, eight darkly clad demons stepping through. The way they moved was organized, in step, marching in a V formation that looked distinctly military. As a matter of fact, the whole thing looked military. While demons didn't exactly have an individual fashion sense, Wyatt had never known them to wear the exact same thing unless they were the same type of demon. These were wearing uniforms. Then, just as the whole situation was bordering on insanity in Wyatt's mind, the demons went and did something even more odd. They dropped to the floor one one knee and bowed.

Wyatt was, for once in his life, way too shocked to say anything. He snapped a look over at Bianca who was staring at him with wide eyes, the only thing from keeping her from being open mouthed in complete awe was her years of training. Wyatt sent a desperate look to her, looking for any sort of explanation. These were her types, he tried to intuit to her, what was he supposed to do. A small jolt of her shoulders served as a shrug in return.

"My king," The demon at the lead of the formation said, though he kept his head down, shoulders tense as if he was expecting intense pain at any second, "We heard sounds, did you need our help?"

Wyatt looked back over at Bianca who had succumbed to the urge to stare, open mouthed. _My King? _She mouthed the words at him in disbelief. He shrugged back.

"Is everything alright?" The demon prompted again, looking up. Bianca's face dropped into something impassive, bordering on threatening and Wyatt took her cue to do the same.

"Yes," Wyatt managed to say without stumbling, folding his arms imperiously, "Everything is just fine." He almost said thank you, but a sharp look from Bianca told him better. The demon bowed his head again in acknowledgment before turning a look at Bianca.

"Did you require our assistance any further Ma'am?"

Bianca squared her shoulders and looked at the demon as if he was completely inconsequential, a look Wyatt had seen on many upper level demons when asked anything. "You'll be called when you're needed." She said darkly, giving them a pointed look toward the door. The demons didn't wait a second longer, they slunk out like submissive dogs, metaphorical tails between their legs. Neither Wyatt or Bianca eased up until the sounds of their feet disappeared down the long hall, as soon as it did the two of them turned to look at each other with openly confused faces, neither quite knowing what to say.

Wyatt ended up settling for the first thing that came to his mind, "What in the hell..."

**1:50**

Chris slammed his back into the wall a little harder than he was intending to, jostling his ribs painfully. He clamped his mouth shut, keeping himself from letting out a pained hiss or any other sound that might give his position away. Good thing too, as the second he flattened himself against the wall one of the supposed "Retrieval Team" dashed by, face looking a bit bloody from the loose brick Chris had sent flying at him. They really should have secured anything minutely tossable, but then again, the people of Camelot weren't exactly expecting someone with telekinesis to just waltz in. They didn't think anyone was that brave... or dumb. Or unlucky, as Chris's case was. He only dared to breathe after the footsteps had faded somewhat, easing back into the wall and bringing up his sleeve to keep the cut on his forehead from dripping into his eye.

This really wasn't going well, it really wasn't. Being dropped back into the alternate timeline without any real plan, no idea where he stood, and no concept of even what direction he should be heading. He honestly didn't care at the moment, his mind was in complete fight or flight mode and that was the only thing keeping him sane, especially with all the old memories pressing forward.

Chris had been able to avoid dealing with the memories before just by avoiding their triggers but, really, this whole timeline was one big trigger, there was no way to hold it back. While the information he was pulling from his old memories was extremely useful, the feelings that came with them were not. He could _not _afford to turn into an emotional wreck right now.

A clang outside of the alley startled Chris back into reaction, diving out of the way just in time for a fireball to scorch the wall behind him. Chris returned the favor by slamming the demon into a wall and jumping over his body to get back out into the empty street.

...or what he thought was an empty street.

The once empty air seemed to fold in upon itself showing a full horde of demons of every shape and size. Chris recognized a good many of them and they seemed to remember him as well, if the looks of pure hatred were any clue. It seems his reputation for being a pain in the regime's ass had gotten ahead of him, they'd called in at least two extra teams, all hell bent on bringing him down. Chris just glared at them with a bravado he didn't feel. It'd required a miracle to vanquish this many demons at once.

And then a miracle dropped out of the sky and made the demons eat lightning. Chris turned his head away from the blinding light only for the second it was there. When he turned back the three demons in the middle of the group were now scorches on the usual pristine floor. Standing in front of them, staring at his hands as if they were on fire, was Leo Wyatt.

"Elder," One of the demons said unhelpfully, shuffling back in fear. You could see the indecision on his face, trying to figure out if he was more scared of the Elder in front of them or the Source that had hired him. Leo saw that on his face too and raised his hands at the rest of the demons.

"No one," Leo said coldly, "Messes with my kids."

Chris punctuated that sentence by telekinetically pulling down one of the semi truck sized video screens from the wall, crashing it down on top of the whole right flank of demons. The remaining ones scattered. As soon as they were gone, the threatening aura Leo was using drained out of him, leaving him looking tired and confused. He turned around, open mouthed, holding his hands out in front of him like he didn't know what to do with them.

"I have my powers back..." He said in a small voice.

If Chris hadn't of figured it out before, he would of right then. This wasn't the alternate Leo, this was his Dad. Chris practically pounced on him, wrapping Leo in one of the most unabashed hugs he'd given since he was a kid. He didn't care if he was being sentimental or girly, this was _his dad _and more importantly, he was hope. If Leo was still himself, they had time to change this. There was still a chance!

Despite himself, their surroundings, and the fact that they'd scared off a horde of demons who would most likely be back any moment, Leo chuckled and pulled back, hands on his son's shoulders. Chris grinned back, "You have no idea how good it is to see you're... you."

"I think I have an idea," Leo returned, patting Chris on the shoulder, "Now, I was wondering if you could explain how I'm here." The growl of a demon cut them both off, it was far enough away now but getting closer. Leo grimaced in that direction, "But I guess that will have to wait. I think running now might be a good idea."

**1:50**

"What are you looking for?" Wyatt followed behind Bianca, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, holding the urge to charge out into the hallway and beat the ever loving tar out of the Demons in it at bay. Bianca didn't seem so inclined, she'd been tearing the room apart since they'd gotten here, scattering anything in sight, upending boxes, pulling drawers out of desks. Aside from a little sideways look she didn't seem to be inclined to let him on the loop. Wyatt sighed again, "If you just tell me, maybe I can help you find it."

Bianca tipped another desk drawer over and pawed through the contents, fingers tapping at the desk in agitation when she didn't find anything. All the papers were blank, just like all the rest of the papers and books in the place. They were there for show, though she couldn't imagine why. If this was still a Phoenix house, which it seemed like it was, there was bound to be something here. Not the cliff notes of their situation, she couldn't hope for that, but a newspapers, some research, a shopping list. _Something._

She stopped and turned back to Wyatt, "We can't just charge out there uninformed. They obviously think we're someone important and I'm willing to bet that those demons out there aren't even the beginning of what we'd have to fight. That was a military formation, I don't care how powerful you are, you can't just hope to fight an army of demons."

Wyatt nodded slowly, he'd come to similar conclusions, even if he didn't entirely want to admit it. All his brain was concentrated on was the big empty spot where his family used to be. He'd been able to sense them since forever and now that they were gone it just felt wrong not to try to track them down.

"Alright," He said finally, "So what can I do?"

Bianca cast a look around fingers tapping again, "I don't know, can you sense for spells, magic, something? This place is bare and there's no reason for it. Everything is for appearances. No one would go to that much effort if they weren't using it to hide something..."

"Good, right," Wyatt snapped his eyes closed, pushing out with his senses. It wasn't something he'd particularly tried before, but it certainly didn't seem outside his realm. He snaked his senses across every inch of the room, almost covering the thing completely until something pinged back. "There." He pointed across the room at a bookshelf Bianca had completely emptied. He crossed over to it, the Phoenix close behind, and scraped his fingernails along the bottom shelf, pulling it up. They both leaned in, looking at the contents underneath.

"Congratulations," Bianca said in a sarcastic tone, "You have found a light switch."

Wyatt glared, "In a bookshelf? There's got to be a reason." and without much of a second thought, he reached out and flipped it. The room's lights dimmed only for a second before a blue glow overtook it. The far wall was glowing, images flashing over it in an obvious start up sequence. "It's a computer." Wyatt said before sending a grin over to Bianca, pleased with himself. She gave him a flat stare and pushed him over.

Words flashed across the wall, asking for proof of identity. The Halliwell and the Phoenix looked at each other, confused.

"Does it want a password or something?" Wyatt asked and as soon as it did, the computer screen flashed red.

'Voice Identified. Wyatt Halliwell. Denied.' The words flashed and disappeared. Wyatt frowned at it, feeling slightly insulted.

"I think I like this computer," Bianca smiled slyly.

'Voice Identified. Administrator. Provide proof of identity.'

Wyatt rolled his eyes, "Go figure, your computer doesn't like me. Now what?"

Bianca peered up at it, examining at the panel of light carefully. It was her computer, she knew. The question now was, if she had a secret computer, what would she use for proof. Passwords were too easy. Fingerprints or eye scans could be flubbed magically... which made a thought occur to her.

"You found this when you were scanning for magic, right?" She looked over at the twice blessed and Wyatt's face dropped into one of understanding.

"How could a computer be magic..." He asked no one in particular and Bianca shrugged in answer. If it was magically powered then she knew exactly what she'd use to make sure only she was able to use it. She lifted a hand, watching it glow the same white blue as the computer screen, and pressed her hand through the monitor. In the next second the panel was awash with information. She skimmed it as it popped up, feeling more and more sick as she did.

"Oh," She said simply after a minute and pulled back, the screen quieted and the lights eased up to their usual level.

"Oh?" Wyatt asked eagerly, "Oh what? What's going on?"

Bianca turned around, not quite sure how to word this. There had been nothing in her training on how to explain this, she couldn't imagine a reason for there to be. Oh well, she'd never been one to mince words before now and she wasn't bout to start. "Wyatt," she said, "I'm pretty sure you caused the Apocalypse and are now the Source of All Evil."

**A/N:**

Hey people! As you may have noticed, there was no little past vignette and there won't be from here on out. I felt it would mess with the pacing too much and, really, it wouldn't be nice to take away from the action coming up to go to entirely different places. So. Here we are. Tell me what you think, if you're confused, tell me about what. Some stuff is still going to be explained, but I'd appreciate the input on what I might need to concentrate on.

Also, forgive this version here. I didn't feel right withholding this for another day so I didn't look over this one as closely as I'd like, and I'm already prone to typos so. Pardon. I'll probably come back in and fix it tomorrow when I find a bagillion inevitable errors.


	9. Good & Evil

Disclaimer: Blah blah. Not mine!

Chapter Nine: Good & Evil

**2:05 pm**

"That's not funny," The words fell out of Wyatt's mouth, sounding a bit more desperate than he might have liked. Bianca just kept staring at him with that flat look of hers, like existence pissed her off.

Bianca shifted her stance and crossed her arms, "Does this look like the face of someone who jokes a lot?"

Wyatt chose not to answer that, his hand coming up to agitatedly brush at his nose, the other propped onto his hip. He was trying very, very hard to make the pieces in his head fit together but they all just seemed okay with swimming around aimlessly, slipping through his fingers anytime he attempted to catch one. In his long experience in the business of being a Halliwell, he'd never been one to crack under pressure. Her certainly wasn't now, but wasn't exactly in perfect form.

Demons were one thing, they were solvable. A spell, a potion, a wave of the hand or a quick stab to the gut with Excalibur... Solvable. Besides, he wasn't going to allow something like a demon even slightly disrupt his good mood, it would give them too much credit. This, though, this was different. The whole thing felt like a trap to him, a big trap that he was helpless against, and if there was anything Wyatt wasn't used to, it was feeling helpless. He refused to be conned and he refused to be bested in this.

He squeezed his eyes shut and let out a calming breath, regaining a sliver of calm before he looked back at Bianca. "You read all that just now?"

Bianca was glad she'd had the forethought to turn away for a second because she doubted her eye roll would help right then. Of course he wouldn't make this easy on her, she didn't know why she was even hoping that. If he'd just accept it, they could skip this melodramatic step and head on to more important things.

Bianca lifted one shoulder in a shrug, turning on a heel to face him, "More or less," the look Wyatt returned to that wasn't anywhere close to friendly, "Okay, look, this all was written in my shorthand so I don't know the specifics, but I'll tell you what I do know." She heaved a large breath, hoping he'd at least let her finish, "Sometimes around ten years ago the war between witches and demons stopped being a secret. For some reason it looks like all the demons in the underworld were flushed out into our world." Bianca looked back over at the mostly blank computer screen, trying to figure out a way to sum up all the various atrocities that were listed. Riots, Murders, the hostile takeover of several large governments, witch hunts. Her voice was slightly haunted when she spoke again, "The mortals didn't take it well. It was... bad. The magical community got blamed for it and humans lashed out."

Wyatt listened, still and quiet, looking at her with an unusually flat expression, "and that makes me evil?"

Bianca clamped down on the reproachful look rising to the surface, "I'm getting to it. When it all happened, you showed up and you just named yourself King. You told the world you could save them from all of this and they believed you. You pegged the blame on the witches, " She hesitated for only a second, "And then you started killing them, _good _witches."

Wyatt glared intently at the floor. "Why in the hell would I do that?"

"You claimed the demons had been repressed by the witches, that they were only fighting back to protect themselves. You said they were _reformed." _She couldn't stop her laugh at that idea. "Funny thing was, the demons were following you, they were your own personal army. Anyone who didn't join you was named an enemy and was hunted down." Bianca kept pressing, "I know how to read between the lines. This has all the signs of the source orchestrating his own ascension to power. You have to understand that."

"No," Wyatt answered angrily, "I wouldn't do that."

Bianca threw her hands up, "You think I like this, huh?" She couldn't hold back her annoyance any longer, stalking forward so she was within arms distance of him, "I'm evil here too! You think I like the idea that I apparently am okay with any of this, that I've helped this happen? I'm not, but I got over it five minutes ago and you need to just man up and deal with it."

Wyatt's reaction was a bit more direct than she was expecting, glare all of a sudden aimed right at her, sheer magical power emanating from him in terrifying waves. Bianca steadied her footing, refusing to be daunted even though her nerves were screaming at her to back off. She would if she could have, but she was already in this too deep. This had to be done.

"I don't think you get it," Wyatt said, words cold, "I don't care if you can deal with this. I'm not like you and I don't give a damn about what you say. Do you have any idea how many times my family and I have saved the world? I know I don't! There's too many to count. I am _good. _It's not possible for me to do all... that. You wouldn't have the slightest idea, you the one with demonic powers, you probably feel right at home!"

"Is that so?" Bianca returned, eyebrows raised, "Orb."

Wyatt looked at her like she was insane, "What?"

"You heard me. Orb." This time it was a command.

To his own surprise, Wyatt obeyed and was treated not to the sight of the familiar blue and white light that orbing brought on, but a sick purple and black one. He was so shocked by the sight he almost forgot to orb right back into place, the room reforming almost reluctantly and when it did, he felt that anger flood right in around his surprise. He turned back to Bianca, expecting that same self satisfied expression to be on her face, but instead she had a look he couldn't exactly peg. It was stern but almost understanding.

She stepped forward and poked him in the chest, "You feel that anger? That's the dark powers in you. You have to get control of them or, believe me, they _will_ turn you."

He was only half listening, still shocked by the fact that he didn't seem to be a whitelighter anymore, "Those were black orbs..."

"Yeah."

Wyatt stared at her numbly, "I'm evil."

"No," Bianca's words seemed to surprise him but she pressed on, "Right now you've got evil running through your blood, a _lot_ of it, actually. I'm even willing to bet that dark orbing isn't even the beginning of what you can do. But that's not important. You're still you." She let out a sigh, "Someone once told me that powers can't make you evil if you don't let them. They'll be tempting as hell but you know what you're dealing with now, so you can control it. As long as you remain good in your mind, you can fix all this, and you _can _fix this. If there's anything I've learned in the past two years it's not to underestimate a Halliwell."

Despite himself, Wyatt let out a short laugh, "This must be opposite world," He commented, "Because I think you just gave a whitelighter speech."

Bianca looked taken aback and minutely disgusted, "Really? Ew."

Wyatt did crack up laughing then, attempting to rub the optimism back into his brain. It was all he had right then. Mel had her avoidance tactics, Chris had that single minded habit of pushing through problems until they broke, and what did he have? A sunny disposition and a trust that things would work out. Wyatt dropped his hands and let out a breath.

"Alright." He said without any real reason and Bianca raised an eyebrow in response, "Who was it that told you that thing about powers?"

There was only a few seconds of deliberation before Bianca spoke, "Chris did. Repeatedly actually." She didn't give him the opportunity to press before she slapped him on the arm and motioned to follow her, "Now we have one more problem to deal with."

"What now?" Wyatt almost whined.

"You," Bianca answered, "We have a golden opportunity to take this place down from the inside. The problem is you can't act worth a damn. If we want any hope of pulling this off I can't have you apologizing or thanking one of your demonic minions so, Halliwell, I'm going to give you a crash course on being evil."

Wyatt stared up at the woman with no small amount of trepidation, "For future knowledge, the next time you say that to someone maybe you should try to keep the crazy grin off your face."

Bianca didn't dignify that with an answer.

**2:15 pm**

The practical applications of telekinesis in the use of petty theft had never occurred to Leo until that moment. What he actually found more alarming was the fact that the idea had not only occurred to his son, but that Chris was actually quite adept at it. The real question he wanted to ask as he watched Chris slowly pop the locks on the other side of the door was precisely which lifetime he learned that in. 23 or not, Leo was not beyond grounding him for a magically assisted B&E. Cluing into Leo's thoughts not through magic but through pure familiarity, Chris sent his father a soft smirk.

"Relax," He said lowly, "There's no such thing as personal gain here." He made a fast slashing motion and the security chain popped out of place, the door drifting open shortly after. "No Powers that'd give a damn anyway."

"I noticed that..." Leo sighed. He could feel the difference, even though he hadn't had his powers in a long time, the emptiness was oppressive. He'd always taken comfort in knowing there was some plan. Not that every event in the world was laid out piece for piece unchangably... it was more just the comfort of knowing someone was interested. He'd always been able to feel it, and now...

He caught Chris giving him a look out of the corner of his eye. The half whitelighter was staring at him with a look Leo knew too well. It was a look he'd used more than once on the sisters when they lost focus or were just plain scared of what was ahead of them. It was a look equal parts comfort and understanding. Chris held the door open, standing over the threshold, waiting patiently for Leo to come to some conclusion. He didn't quite find it, but he got close enough to know they should get back to moving. He nodded shortly in thanks and Chris just shrugged and disappeared into the darkness of the doorway.

"C'mon," He called, "Let's swap you out of those elder's robes before someone sics the demons on us again."

Leo pushed inside, not quite adjusting to the dark quick enough to avoid running into a rack of clothes noisily. The lights snapped on shortly after, displaying what looked like a rather high end clothing store.

"Here," Chris pushed a shirt in his direction and Leo took it on reflex. The minute he looked down at it he raised an eyebrow.

"Chris this isn't exactly my style." He held up the black shirt, plucking at the sleeve and watching the elastic fabric spring back up. He made an attempt to hand it back put Chris didn't give him the chance.

"Come on Dad," He urged, almost amused, "Black is the new flannel. If you don't put something less conspicuous on we'll never get anything done and I _promise_ I won't tell anyone you dressed like a Darklighter."

Leo was obligated to give Chris a "look" for being such a smartass but his heart wasn't really in it. It dissolved into a smile shortly after and he took the shirt with as much grace as he could. Chris just smirked at him and turned back to go across the room, rummaging in a box sitting against the wall. It was a tried and true Halliwell tactic, humor before panic, and their children had learned it well. It was the only thing reminding him that his son hadn't reverted into his jaded old self. He could see the shadows of this world in his eyes for sure, but Chris even being able to joke at all in this place was a great reassurance.

The whole city just had an oppressive air that Leo couldn't quite come up with a comparison to. It felt a little like the underworld, dark, claustrophobic, hopeless. It was just in the air, and the abandoned shop they were in wasn't helping either. Come to think of it, he really hadn't seen that many people at all since they'd given those demons the slip. Granted, they had been ducking through back alleys and across people's balconies but he would have expected to see _someone_ by now.

"Chris, where is everyone? It's the middle of the afternoon, there should be people here." He fidgeted with the shirt, switching the flannel one he'd had on under his elder's robes. By the time he pulled it over his head and looked back, Chris had stopped moving, staring blankly at the wall in front of him, a harsh look overtaking his face. Leo moved to his side, dropping down slowly on a knee and laying a hand on his shoulder.

The touch seemed to jolt Chris out of whatever it was he was seeing. The witchlighter shoved the box he was looking through against the wall and rubbed his hands over his face, Leo had noticed him doing the gesture since this whole thing had started. Leo knew what it meant and he waited for the offending memory to pass and fade. Chris eventually dropped his hands with an annoyed sigh, flashing a look of gratitude for the moment to pull himself together.

"I knew this place would be empty because there was a mark on the door." Chris said, pointing at the door they'd come in. It was still standing halfway open, shuddering lightly in the wind. Leo squinted at it, only then seeing the black X on the door. It was sloppy and angry, the exact opposite of the careful perfection that was the rest of the city. "It means the owners of this store were traitors, spies, enemies of the state... or, I dunno, someone who breathed wrong around Wya— the current government. It doesn't matter. Whatever they did, their life is now his. Anyone who gets the mark gets taken up to the city center for 'reprogramming'. Very few come back." Chris turned back to the box, tipping it over as he talked, voice becoming alarmingly monotone, "After that, they mark your house and your business to warn anyone else off. If you try to show up anywhere that's marked you're admitting treason and you get carted off too."

Apparently finding what he was looking for, Chris stood up and Leo followed, "This city used to be full. Then the evil made him paranoid. Now it's just full of demons."

Leo suddenly couldn't fault Chris for being so jaded back then, and he had a feeling he'd only seen the smallest part of what was wrong in this world. He pushed away the oppressive feeling of the air and straightened his posture, reaching out to grip Chris's arm.

"This isn't your world anymore," He caught his son's gaze and held it unblinkingly, "You belong with us, Your mother, your brother, sister, and I. None of this exists anymore. You and I are going to fix this and then we're going to go home and have an actual birthday party. Understand?"

Chris held that stare for a long time, eyebrows pinched together as if he was trying to decide if he did in fact understand. When he opened his mouth to talk it wasn't anywhere near what Leo was expecting, "You never said what happened to mom after the shift."

Leo became unfocused only for a second, memory flashing back to the library in magic school. One minute he'd been there with the sisters, the next he was all alone. He didn't want to think about where they were right now. Where exactly does the living soul go when they don't have a body to go into? He snapped back forcibly, eyebrows drawing together. "She'll be back waiting for us when we sort this out. Alright?"

Ever so slowly Chris nodded back, letting a tense breath out through his teeth. He only hesitated a moment more before gently moving out of Leo's grip and over to the wall. He pulled a pocketknife he'd found in the box and carefully drew a line precisely down the pattern in the wallpaper, peeling it back to reveal a hidden doorway.

"You know what's awesome about arrogant evil overlords?" Chris said as he stepped back and looked at his handiwork. "He'll look for technology and he'll look for magic but he'll never look for the mundane. Wyatt really should have played clue more when he was younger."

Leo patted Chris on the shoulder and stepped forward to push the door open, "We'll just have to work on that when we get back." The wall panel slid inwards and to the side showing Leo a long dark tunnel sparked with lanterns only close enough to keep you from tripping over yourself as you went down it. He dropped down into it, continuing on only when he heard Chris slam the door shut behind him, jamming it shut so no one could follow.

He could only eye the walls suspiciously as he continued, squinting to adjust his eyes. "It's a good thing I'm not claustrophobic." He said mostly to himself. Chris mumbled a huh back anyway, obviously not paying attention. Leo looked back to see he'd stopped several feet behind him, and from what little light he had, Leo could make out a look of confusion on Chris's face. "What is it?"

Chris frowned, distracted, "This might sound crazy but did you just see a girl in a white dress?"

Leo opened his mouth to answer just in time for the nearest lantern to shatter, tossing them into pure black. He got the chance to drag in one more breath before the world was pain and he hit the floor.

**2:15 pm**

He usually didn't stay around to observe his handiwork. Usually it was a matter of straightening out time, dealing with the meddlers, and then shuffling his way off to the next offense. This one however, this one had been far more difficult than what the Pale Man had ever dealt with before and though he wasn't usually the type to indulge, he just had to take a look around. He arrived in the center of the ruined city, stretched his hands above his head like he was trying to hug the sky.

Ah yes, this was how it was supposed to be. This was the way time was supposed to run.

The Pale Man breathed in a large satisfied breath and prepared to leave, but then, there on the edge of his senses. No. He transported in a flash, arriving with time frozen to look in on the two people. The girl! The girl should be dead yet here she was alive and well. He almost charged in again to finish the job but he held back. He couldn't, any more direct influence on his part would only destabilize things further. He'd have to find someone to do it for her.

That shouldn't be too hard, when he'd killed her, he'd seen a peek into her role in this time line and he had a feeling that demons didn't suffer spies lightly. Containing a manic laugh, he disappeared again, plan already in mind.

… **pm**

For the second time in less than 12 hours, Chris woke up in the Manor's sitting room with an utter sense of confusion. He knew it wasn't the real Manor, despite it looking identical. It was too still. Chris couldn't remember a five minute stretch where everything was still in the house. There was always some distraction, if not demons or stray magic, it was one of the many cousins tramping through. That was a big giveaway, but not the biggest. It was the smell that really warned him. There was always the lingering smell of spices or food in the house tinted with just an edge of magic. He couldn't actually describe what magic smelled like, but you knew it when it hit you, and the Manor had always been filled with it.

The sound of pleasant voices filtered in as he sat up, staring at the room suspiciously. He looked over the back of the couch into the sun room, eyes catching on the wicker chair and table that occupied the far corner. He could only see part of it, just enough to see someone sitting there, a dark suited elbow leaning on the armrest.

With a sense of ease Chris was pretty sure was as unnatural as this fake-manor, he silently got up followed the sounds.

"...rules shmools," A feminine voice said, sounding more than a little put out, "if I want to use the word I can use the word." A small clacking sound Chris was familiar with rang out shortly after, as if someone was placing little wooden pieces down with some ferocity.

"Now, now," A male voice Chris very much did recognize rang out, gentle and calming, "You were the one talking about rules five minutes ago."

"That's a different game." The girl replied just in time for Chris to make it around the corner, the calmness of the room being the only thing keeping him from turning around and running in the opposite direction. Instead, he stopped in the middle of the sun room, hooked his thumbs in his back pockets, and stared openly at the people sitting in his family's house.

"Oh come on," Chris almost whined, "Don't tell me I'm dead again."

Clarence, his two time angel of death, smiled up at him with all the charm of a beloved grandfather, "Oh no, not for now." He stood up from the table and gestured for Chris to take the remaining empty wicker chair with all the outdated manners Leo had tried to instill on his own children. The teenage girl sitting at the table wasn't nearly as polite.

"Really, though, I don't think you ever stopped being dead from last time," She stared at him openly, halfway leaning across the table to slap scrabble pieces onto the board. Clarence eyed her with a slightly exasperated look. She caught it, looking probably as close to abashed as she ever got. She shrugged at Chris, "Y'know, purely by definition." She dropped back into her chair, halo of blonde hair whipping around her shoulders and spilling over onto her white sundress.

Chris wasn't impressed with that, not finding the subject of his status in breathing to be funny at all. He walked up to the table on cautious steps, leaning against the back of the chair but not sitting in it. For some reason he had a feeling that sitting in the chair would be some kind of commitment and he wasn't about to do that before he heard the terms.

He decided he didn't feel like being tactful today and cut right to it, "Alright, what's the deal. I'm not dead and I'm not anywhere near ceasing to exist, so unless you guys have an excuse for keeping me... wherever this is, I'd appreciate it if you sent me back. I have things to do."

"Ooh," the girl said wide eyed, turning to Clarence, "You are right, he is a bit mouthy."

"And you're rude," Chris returned before looking back over at Clarence, "What's her deal?"

Clarence tried to answer, of course, but the girl would have none of it, halfway jumping out of her seat to answer, grin plastered on her face, "Oh don't worry, I like it when they have attitudes. Makes them more virulent."

Chris could do nothing but stare flatly at the girl for a moment pointing a finger at her like he had something to say before whipping his head over to talk to Clarence again, "Did she just compare me to a virus?"

"Oh shit, did I get it wrong again? Damn english, so many words... viscous maybe?" The girl looked severely crestfallen, staring off into space, lips whispering to herself like she was trying to figure out where she went wrong. Clarence swept a hand over his face, looking completely martyred soon though, the expression turned into a chuckle.

"Excuse her, she's just rediscovered cursing," He explained with a soft smile, "She hasn't quite gotten back to the manners part yet. She'll get to it here in a minute, I'm sure, just give her some time. In the meantime, we have some catching up to do, Chris, it has been a while. I understand you're in a bit of trouble right now, but otherwise, how have you been?"

There were times as a witch where you just had to throw up your hands and go with it. Staring at the two in front of him, a girl distractedly talking to herself and the Angel of Death talking to him like they were old friends, he just decided that it was one of those times. It helped that, despite the fact that Chris hadn't wanted to see Clarence any time soon, he really did like the man... angel... whatever he was. In the past, before anyone had known, he was one of the few people who was really rooting for him, whether Chris knew it at the time or not.

Chris dropped down into the wicker chair, slouching comfortably, "It's been interesting," He supplied, "Demons, dating a girl from an enemy coven, crazy guy trying to reset time. The usual. How about you?" He staunchly refused to acknowledge the twisted feeling in his gut when he mentioned Bianca. He wouldn't believe she was dead until he saw it himself and if she was, well, he'd deal with it then.

Clarence nodded, chuckling, "Ah yes, the usual for me as well, guiding souls from this world to the next."

"Vibrant!" The shout started the other two out of their conversation, turning towards the girl again, "That's it right? That's the correct word?"

"Eh, I don't know," Chris shrugged, "I don't think I've ever been called vibrant in either lifetime. Bitchy, neurotic, sure. Vibrant, no." He almost didn't notice it at first, staring over again at the girl. He thought he'd seen wrong, but a few moments ago she had seemed... younger. The girl snorted out a laugh, propping her chin up on her palms apparently forgetting about her search for the correct word.

"It's really great to meet you, Chris, I can call you Chris, right?" Her tone of voice took on something entirely more polite, a sharp change from what it was before. Clarence made a hand motion that said it all. Apparently the girl had discovered her manners in a big way. Chris took another look at her, not fooling himself anymore. She was older. When he walked in he would have estimated her at about 14, she was at least a year older then, hair now down past her shoulders. This was no normal little girl.

She noticed him staring and looked down at herself as if expecting she'd dropped something down the front of her dress. Then it seemed to dawn on her, "Oh, you've noticed have you?" She looked slightly embarrassed, a pink blush covering her cheeks, she plucked at her dress shyly, "It's good you woke up now, if you'd woken up a half an hour ago I wouldn't have been able to talk at all and I've _really_ been wanting to meet you for such a long time."

He looked at her with utter seriousness, more than a little cautious now, "What are you?"

"Chris," Clarence leaned over, dropping a comforting hand on his arm, "I'd like you to meet the Source of All Good."

**A/N: **

Aah here we are, a bit quicker than last week. It's also _really _talky. I hope you all don't mind. In other news, I'm so glad the last chapter surprised people. I will be getting replies back to those reviews but my email yet again decided to delete some, so I have to sort through which ones I did and did not reply to again. Some people are also making predictions. Feel free to guess away but, for your guys' enjoyment, I'm not going to either confirm or deny any of them :D. Hope you all liked and, yet again, I adore reviews, they kick my inspiration into gear.

In other news, for the RP crowd going around here who would like to join a Charmed RP. I actually just joined up at one that's new and raring to go. It's not mine, but it's a guilty pleasure so, if anyone is interested: http:/ /z3. Invisionfree . com / Charmed_Once_More / (removing spaces)


	10. Past Mistakes

Disclaimer: Blah blah. Not mine!

**Chapter Ten: Past Mistakes**

… **pm**

When he was younger, Chris's school had a system of sending notes back home with troubled students. These notes would need to be signed by a parent and brought back if you didn't want to face further consequences. Chris had... a great deal of these notes. Sometimes more than one a week. It was in the years when Wyatt had moved up into the next school and he was left to his own devices. Devices that usually ended with snot nosed classmates picking fights that Chris really couldn't conjure the urge to ignore. He had a monster of a temper back then, easily tweaked and slow to simmer down.

He'd be kidding himself if he said that he didn't have that temper anymore. He could say that he had a much finer control over it though, instead of the firecracker impulses of the years before, he'd honed his temper into something colder and more stable. However, unfailingly there was one thing that could set him off. Chris really, truly, disliked those who hovered in the overworld, looking down on the lowly witches, commanding them to clean up all their messes.

He'd been under the impression that the only people he really had to curse were a bunch of holier than thou clicky elders... but now he had this.

Clarence's hand on his arm tightened uncomfortably as soon as Chris's expression descended into something much less friendly. Chris just sent him a look and jerked his arm sharply out of his grip. He'd been under the impression that Angels of Death weren't like the other immortal good guys in at least they didn't pretend to know how to live your life better than you did, but Clarence seemed to be trying to ruin that reputation.

"Great," Chris snorted and glared flatly, "Just what I need, more holy meddlers to come and order me to do things they're not brave enough to do."

If he believed even in the slightest that it was possible, he would have walked out of the fake manor right then. He even entertained the idea that this was all some kind of miserable dream or that they were lying and there really was no source of all good. Really, if there had been one before now, you think that they would have shown up at _some _point. But then again, that was the nature of the supposed paragons of good, now wasn't it? Cowardice.

Chris turned a flat look at the girl, knowing there was nothing else she could be. There was something there he couldn't identify. At the same time, she looked more like a girl... a rapidly aging girl, but a girl. The source dipped her face behind her hair, lips pressed together in slight embarrassment. Chris felt a little bad at being so rude to someone who looked no older than one of his older cousins, but at the same time, his temper was demanding attention. He crooked his eyebrows up at her, tired of waiting.

"I," She started lamely, eyes flickering up to him, "I would like to say that I could do this myself, but I can't. This pocket realm is as close as I am allowed to get to the real world. To even be here right now is... difficult. I swear, though, I'm here to help."

Chris's expression flickered to one of annoyance, "Right, I've heard that before. You going to give me some nonsensical scrap of information so you can pretend like you helped, and then try to kill us if we get too powerful."

The Source sighed lightly, threading her fingers together, "I know what the Elders have been like and I'm sorry for what they've done." She actually looked a little annoyed herself, "They think they are doing right, but they're misguided. They haven't heard me in a long time. Some try... but I don't think they really remember me enough to know how." She shook her head.

"They don't know you're here?" Chris asked in disbelief.

She shrugged, "None of them were around the last time I was able to speak."

Chris's disbelief morphed into curiosity, not even bothering to hide his stare at the girl, "You're telling me that, instead of talking to the elders, you're talking to _me? _...why?"

Once again, the girl and Clarence exchanged one of those conspiratorial looks that Chris didn't like at all. He returned it with a look dripping in all the sarcasm he could muster, which was quite a lot.

"Christopher," Clarence began somberly, "We would like to tell you a story."

**2:45 pm**

Evil training was not going well. Bianca's earlier assumption that Wyatt didn't have a lying bone in his body was perhaps more of an underestimation than she had thought. Not only were his bones sickening truthful, but so was every cell, hair, and shred of clothing. The only thing the "training" was accomplishing was giving her a severe headache and the theory that Chris was, in fact, adopted. She wasn't aware two people could be so entirely different and yet still have comparable DNA. Then again, Chris hadn't been told he was the paragon of all good since before he was born.

Wyatt had an overbearing, well, she couldn't call it fear, but extreme reluctance to be evil in every respect. The very idea seemed to make his skin crawl. She was starting to blame herself. Since she told him that he was technically the Source of all Evil, with all of those demonic powers bubbling under his skin, waiting to overtake him the minute he gave in even a little... well, that just didn't help with him _pretending _to be evil. Every time he almost got the idea, he'd immediately pull back.

He didn't say as much, but Bianca knew from experience, the inky black feeling of demonic powers creeping into your soul was terrifying, and the idea to giving in to them was even worse.

"Okay," She held up her hands in half surrender, circling around to face an annoyed looking Wyatt. She blinked at the image, "Oh hey..." She said distractedly, "Hold that face."

Of course the expression immediately dropped into one of confusion, "What?"

Bianca let it go, mind reeling around to another tactic. "I'm going at this all wrong. You don't need to memorize all this demonic etiquette, you just have to do one thing."

Wyatt crooked an eyebrow, growing more than a little tired off all this, "and that is?"

"Just look annoyed and keep quiet." Bianca smirked. "Just imagine it, if you don't know what these people are talking about, just glare at them..."

"...and they'll supply the information for me." Wyatt's eyes lit up. He'd seen this happen with demons all the time. Some minion would withhold something and one look from an upper level demon would have them spilling as much information as their demonic tongues would allow. The demons would just assume he was pissed and stay out of his way.

"Yeah," Bianca nodded, "and for all the other times, I'll step in and take over. But," she slowed and mentally winced as she continued, "If I do step up and correct you or even partially look like I'm more competent than you, you have to reprimand me. You can't have someone looking better than you when you're the Source of all Evil."

A grin snuck up onto Wyatt's face, "So you're telling me I have permission to insult you..."

Bianca's eyes narrowed dangerously, "Don't get used to it. As soon as this is over, I will kick your ass for every time you abused that power, and don't think I can't."

Wyatt wasn't in the least bit threatened, hands raising up in false surrender, "I'd _never _abuse your trust like that, I treat all my half demon acquaintances with respect."

Bianca glared, "I am not a-"

Once again, the room's doors slammed open with all the subtlety of an elephant marching band. The two turned, expecting to once again see the small troop of guard demons that had intruded earlier, only to find themselves staring down a new batch. These ones looked a great deal more imposing, uniforms a little bit more clean cut. They didn't bother to kneel either, making only short bows at the hips before they marched the rest of the way into the room. Wyatt only remembered at the last moment to wipe any trace of a smile away.

The row of demons stopped a few feet away, the middle one continuing up to stand in front of them. He was a brittle, grizzled example of a demon. Human in appearance, but obviously old, scars lacing his face like some demented sewing experiment. His eyes were only slits with rust red irises shining behind them. Bianca felt herself tense as he walked up, not knowing exactly who he was but knowing a serious threat when she met one.

Those rusty eyes slid in her direction as soon as she lowered her own look of demonic indifference. The gaze only stayed on her for a bare moment, but she could tell he'd gleaned more than enough information in that time.

"I thought you were dead." The demon's voice slipped out of his mouth, raw and obviously tinged with hatred for her.

Bianca just tilted her chin up a hair more, no idea of what he was talking about but knowing the answer anyway, "You think it would be that easy?"

A cold look was enough of an answer from the demon before he seemed to dismiss her entirely in favor of Wyatt. "We have a report from Camelot."

Wyatt crossed his arms strongly, remembering every word Bianca had said. He only crooked an eyebrow at the demon as a gesture for him to continue. He tensed his own muscles for a fight, sure that he couldn't pass for some kind of evil overlord. The scarred demon didn't even bat an eye, continuing on with the same bored voice.

"Your brother was sighted in the third tier."

Wyatt couldn't stop himself, "Chris?"

The demon looked very much like he wanted to lift an eyebrow but didn't, "Unless you have any other siblings who are a constant thorn in my side, and if you do, please let me know." The demon rolled his eyes. Wyatt didn't even have to fake the glare that time, he would have already vanquished the demon if he didn't want to know what he had to say. The demon noticed the look, and seemed as cowed as he was likely to get, "Like I said... He was in the third tier, probably doing something for that pitiful resistance of his. He trashed three blocks and vanquished three of my demons with a holo-screen." The demon's gaze stretched over to Bianca again, "We wouldn't be having this problem if your assassin here hadn't of failed in her mission to kill him."

"Be. Quiet." Wyatt barked the order, voice ice cold. The scarred demon stepped back a pace, the closest approximation of fear on his face. Even Bianca found herself slightly startled, even as she was ready to slice the demon's throat herself.

The demon seemed to gather himself, straightening his clothes, and sending an annoyed look up to Wyatt, "Aside from that, you are needed at central. If you'd follow me..." 

… **pm **

"Years ago, it was a dark time for magic." The girl started, eyes far away, "Even though I can't be there, I watch, and it hurt. So many lost, so many good turned to evil. The world lost a lot of its hope and even the non-magical could feel it. I watched for so long that I couldn't stand it. I couldn't keep going as I was, so I reached out. I looked for someone who I could rest my hopes on.

"I found a boy. Good and pure. He was everything that the elders ask of a witch. He obeyed the letter of wiccan law, never used his powers for personal gain, dedicated his time to the craft and saving innocents. The perfect candidate. I reached out to him and gave him the power to change things. The power to change time."

Chris's heart dropped into his stomach. The Source looked absolutely ashamed, head hanging, it was the only thing that kept him from shaking some sense into her.

"You're talking about _him?"_ Chris spat out. The Pale Man, the guy who'd made his day a hell.

"He wasn't always like he is now." Her head sank lower, "The power I gave him isn't like the sort the Cleaners or Angels have, it isn't even like the powers those misguided Avatars think they have. It's faceted. This power, in combination with being a witch, someone who fully masters it would find little to no limits in it. It's..." Her eyes cast about for the word, "intoxicating. It drove him insane."

"Power does that..." Chris commented quietly, thinking back into his darker years as the evil Wyatt came into possession of more and more power, each driving him more crazy, more murderous.

"He did good at first," She defended, still looking guilty, "but then he ran out of evil to fight, the pressure of his life became too much, and it consumed him."

Chris pressed his fingers to his temple and closed his eyes, throwing all his immediate impressions aside so he could look at the problem objectively. He followed the lines of the story back, making connections as he did, trying to find some obvious solution.

"You gave him the power," He opened his eyes for a second, looking warily at the Source. "Why can't you just take it back. Suspend his power like you did Phoebe's." He asked the question with little to no hope that it would actually help. If it were that easy, they would have done it before now.

Clarence was the one who spoke up then, shaking his head, "They tried and failed. Someone with this power has the ability to be outside of space and time, the Angels and Elders have no power over him."

"Great," Chris sank back into his chair, dreading the next question, tensing like someone who knew they were about to be hit but had no ability to get out of the way. "What do you need me for?"

Once again the source's eyes slid over to Clarence's, looking for support. Neither of them looked like they were pleased about what was going to come next. Clarence shifted in his chair, sliding on the edge and turning to Chris, eyes soft, "We can't take the power from him, but a transfer of power is possible. You can-"

"Bullshit." Chris spat the word out even before Clarence was finished talking. "No way, nuh uh. You're going to have to find someone else to take the crazy evil time powers. That might be Wyatt's thing but it's not mine. My thing is telekinesis and being an asshole, and I abuse even that. Go find someone else to clean up your mistakes."

"There is no one else." The Source broke in, slamming her hand on the table and drawing their attention back to her. She'd aged again, hair now hanging midway down her back, eyes a little more wise. "The reason I was so eager to award that power was because there were certain requirements that had to be met to give this power away and these requirements are very rare. I didn't think it would happen again. The biggest one-"

"No way," Chris eyed her, already knowing the answer before she said it. The one thing he had that Wyatt didn't, "Half Elder. Crazy guy is half Elder."

The Source nodded, "There is no one else." She reached behind her neck, unfastening a necklace that had been hidden under her hair, the light flashing off the bit of of metal catching Chris's eye. Reverently, the girl wrapped the black chord up and slid the necklace across the table where it shined harmlessly between an assortment of scrabble tiles. Chris chose to just stare at it like it was poisoned. It looked harmless enough, just a shined slip of metal hammered into a familiar shape, no more than two fingers wide, three small metal beads on each side of it, all hanging off a beaten old leather cord.

"A triquatra?" He asked idly.

"Yes," The Source answered, "It's the most powerful symbol wiccans own. This necklace will allow you to transfer his powers over to yourself. You'll know how to use it when it's time. It would only take a moment."

Chris stood angrily from his chair, stalking to the other end of the room and back, trying to find a way to fully express his disgust for this situation. Sitting there in front of him was a way to end this all in a heartbeat. He could take it and have everyone back where they should be before they could really process all this. He could handle that power... hopefully.

Chris stopped, not believing that for a second. He was already halfway cracked ast it was, he couldn't survive that. He turned back to the two, "I'll go insane too, won't I?"

"It's a possibility." The source answered quietly.

"And if that happens?" He pressed.

The Source's eyes met his, all of a sudden filled with all the wisdom in the world, "We have safety measures and will do whatever is necessary to keep you from harming anyone." Chris held that gaze for as long as he could stand it, trying to find exactly what she meant. He didn't really have to, he knew what he'd do if he was in her place. He turned back around and started to pace again.

"This isn't an order," The Source said, ignoring Chris's sarcastic look he shot back at her, "This is your choice. We can only ask."

"No thanks," Chris broke in as soon as she'd finished, making the decision before he could second guess himself, "There's another way, the rules from before still apply. If I change this world back to the good version it should still revert. I _will _make things right without turning myself crazy." He said the words with more conviction than he felt, even as the tiny voice in the back of his head nagged at him. He looked back down at the necklace on the table and back up to the eyes of the Source. It was then that the inherent realist in him broke through and he snatched the thing off the table by its cord.

He pointed a finger at the two of them, necklace trapped in his palm, "As the very last resort, you understand?"

The Source nodded sagely, "It's probably time to send you back."

Chris nodded in agreement, wanting to be as far away from these two as he could, but then a thought occurred to him. He turned narrowed eyes back to them, "You said this guy was half Elder. Which Elder?"

Clarence crooked an eyebrow knowingly, "Gideon."

**A/N:**

Okay, this chapter took _way _longer than it should have but I had a minor epiphany half way through and realized I'd have to change some things to make this run smoother. I had another two scenes I was wanting to put in this chapter but I think I'll let it wait until next time so you guys don't have to wait another three days. Anyway! Here ya are.


	11. Dead Zone

**Disclaimer: Blah blah. Not mine!**

**Chapter Eleven: Dead Zone**

**2:45 pm**

Leo woke up to a low dirt ceiling and an uncomfortable claustrophobic fear that he'd been buried alive. It only lasted for a second, of course, until the rest of the room came into focus. It was a bare dirt room supported with suspiciously rotted looking wooden supports and random rocks. There was a door, if you could truly call it that, as it was made of bits of castoff scrap metal kept in place by a heavy metal chain. The only other things in the room were the cot Leo found himself on and a lonely dented aluminum table.

The whole thing screamed bad to him, he couldn't exactly tell why in particular, as this whole timeline was screaming something similar, but he could tell that it probably wasn't wise for him to be here. He sat up and tensed his muscles, trying to orb out... and nothing happened.

"Oh! Morning sunshine!" The voice made Leo jump and stare as the tin door opened revealing probably the last person he'd ever expect to find in a cave. Ida McCaffey, the guidance counselor at the kids' high school. The memory brought Chris to mind and he cast a look around again, as if his son would appear simply by looking for him a second time. The room was still empty.

"Glad to see you're awake. I was beginning to think the kids whapped you on the head a little too hard." The woman chuckled and stepped inside, taking a moment to re-secure the door and lock the chain. Leo remembered this woman, tough but kind was the impression he'd got from her the last time he'd met her. He still watched her wryly, knowing better than to trust that anyone was the same in this timeline. She sent a sarcastic smile back at him, "You understand though. Can't be too careful."

"Where am I?" Leo cleared his throat quickly, shifting on the bed.

Ms McCaffey dropped the stack of papers in her arms onto the aluminum table before raising an eyebrow at him, "Ah, you're a clueless one are you?" A look of severe distaste invaded her expression, "Don't worry, I was the same before I got out. We all have to start somewhere. This..." She gestured grandly at the dank room, "This is the resistance, my boy. Don't worry, his royal pain in the ass can't find you here."

Leo nearly flinched at that, eyes going distant. Her words were an unexpected punch to the gut. As much as he knew that Wyatt was evil in this existence, as much as Chris had tried to impress how bad it was, it hadn't sunk in until that point, when he realized that these people were so frightened of his son, they were hiding underground. He didn't know what to say to that.

Ms. McCaffey, of course, took his silence for pure confusion.

"This is a magical dead zone." She supplied as if it would explain everything. It didn't. Ida was starting to stare at him as if he were dumb, eyebrows coming down in a look he recalled all three of his kids being scared witless of. "Well now, they scrubbed your mind good, didn't they?" The woman sighed, "Remember a while back, when we supposedly won the war back during that huge 'earthquake'? We 'won' it by the lot up in central doing some weird magic mumbo jumbo that brought hell to earth. Heck if I know how they did it, what I do know is that it caused a lot of destruction for a while and when the dust settled, the war was 'over'." She applied air quotes liberally to all of her statements, accompanying each with an eye roll.

"Anyway, whatever magic they did, they didn't do it right, because these dead zones showed up right after." She shrugged, "Living in a cave isn't exactly cozy, but it's safe. If any of them magic types try to get in here, they're as good as mortal. You can just take em out with a peashooter if you wanted to. They're all too scared to come down."

Leo gripped the edge of the mattress tight, barely listening anymore. Wyatt had joined the underworld with the normal world. He couldn't even conceive of a spell that powerful. The ramifications though... it would throw magic so out of balance that nothing would work right. He pressed a hand to his forehead trying to forcibly remind himself that this wasn't reality, that this could be changed. He just had to find Chris...

"The man I came here with," Leo looked up at the woman, not bothering to soften the question, "Where is he?"

Ms McCaffey's face darkened a little, her arms slowly coming up to cross, "Yeah," she said slowly, "I've been meaning to ask you about that. How well do you know that kid?"

Leo resisted the urge to tell the truth and sidestepped the question, "Why?"

Her expression became more guarded, "Why did he bring you down here?"

Despite popular belief, Leo did know how to lie. 90% of his career as a whitelighter was pretending to be someone else to get into his charge's lives. The skills were a little rusty, of course, he'd been human for a while now, and an elder before that, but they were still there. He dug down and thought quickly.

"The Mark," Leo latched onto the one thing Chris had told him, "I didn't have a choice. He took me down here."

"Ah," The woman softened somewhat, eyes flicking over to a wall, "Yeah... he's a good kid like that."

Leo couldn't help a sad smile at that, "Seems like it."

The woman looked down at her papers distractedly, almost looking a bit sad. She wavered for a minute, seeming like she was rolling some kind of decision over in her head, then, she turned back to him. "There's something you should probably know. His name's Chris, and before a little while ago, he used to be one of us. One of our best actually. We weren't exactly organized for a long time, all of us hopeless and homeless. Then Chris found the dead zones and little by little, he brought us here, he was really young back then, but he was one of the few that kept a head on his shoulders. Saved a lot of people." Her voice tapered off as she thought, eyes casting around the room until they rested on Leo again.

"He brought us here, taught us how to fight, taught us what we were up against. We don't have leaders, you see, but there isn't a single person in these tunnels that didn't have respect for the boy." She turned stiffly, "I'm not telling you this to sing his praises, I just need you to understand. We all loved that kid, and he betrayed us."

Leo had let himself fade into the story, finding it startlingly easy to imagine Chris doing this, mind casting back to all those years ago when he was so frustrated that the girls weren't listening to his orders. He was used to people wanting his opinion and then zapped himself back to a time when no one could give a damn, where he was just a neurotic whitelighter who couldn't even heal. Then the woman's last words filtered in and Leo snapped up to look at her.

"He what?" The disbelief in his voice was entirely real, and more than a little accusatory.

"Don't give me that tone, boy," The woman snapped right back, "I don't like it better than you do, but he did. He's a witch, you understand that? He's one of _them_."

Leo didn't know what to say to that, so he just closed his mouth.

"He shouldn't have come back." She shook her head, "When we found out, I convinced them to let him go. It was pretty much a death sentence anyway, but he's a tough kid, I figured he'd have a more of a chance up there than down here... He shouldn't have come back."

Leo stood up, not bothering to keep an semblance of amiability, "What are they doing to him?"

"You have to understand, these people don't react well to betrayal. I don't think the boy deserves the wrath that's going to come down in him now, but I don't think I can do a thing to stop it. They wouldn't let me anywhere near."

The only thing keeping Leo from doing something he'd sorely regret was the sudden glint he saw in her eye. She tilted her head to the side ever so slowly.

"You understand? There's nothing _I_ can do." She intoned, "But if some damned fool wanted to, they'd want to head down that tunnel, take three rights and a left, and watch out for anyone with weaponry, you hear?"

The tension seeped out of Leo in a minute, eyes wide, "Thank you."

Ida McCaffey waved a hand, smirk returning, "I'd have to be a fool to not see the resemblance in you two, and I'd also have to be a fool to ask about it." She held up the key to the door, eyes softening, "He's a good kid."

"Yeah," Leo swallowed, taking the key, "Yeah he is."

**3:00 pm**

Hate they neighbor. It was practically a demonic commandment, especially if said demon was trying to compete with you for power... or anything else really. Bianca used the commandment liberally on the scarred demon walking in front of her. Rubiec was his name, she'd picked up that much when a lesser demon had shimmered in to offer a report, a report about Chris. It had taken a considerable amount of effort to keep herself from smirking as she listened in. Apparently Chris had more than raised hell on his way around, vanquishing more than his fair share of demons on the way and tearing up a city square before seeming to disappear in a city that had an anti orbing ward in its limits.

Rubiec, on the other hand, seemed a great deal less pleased, dividing his death glare evenly between the messenger and Bianca... which then made the words pop back into her head. 'If she hadn't failed in her mission to kill him...' She shook away a shudder at the thought, channeling it into further anger at the demon who so badly seemed to want her boyfriend dead. If there was one way to really set Bianca off these days, it was wishing harm on Chris. It was something she planned on advertising after all this was done. She was sick of the secrecy, and she wanted to let the demons downstairs know that if you messed with something she cared about, it had to be through her.

The idea cooled her nerves for a second. There was no way she would accept that contract, no matter what kind of messed up world this was. Chris still seemed to be on the side of good, she couldn't be all that different, right?

"Here we are," Rubiec announced in a bored tone, pushing open a double set of doors, depositing them into the entryway of the next room. Whatever it was she had been expecting, this was not it. It was probably the biggest room she'd ever seen, spiraling up so far that she could barely see the ceiling. The whole thing was built out of some kind of impressive looking pale rock she couldn't identify with veins of amethyst, quartz, and even more expensive looking glittery components types scaling the walls all the way to the top, faintly glowing. The rest of the walls were etched with what looked like spells in every language she could imagine, running along the banister of each floor. Most impressive of all, there, on a circular raised dais in the middle of the hall was a glowing triquetra.

"What in the," Wyatt whispered under his breath, forgetting to keep up his act until Bianca discreetly jabbed him in the side. He spared a second to glare at her before snapping back into an agitated pose more befitting of an evil overlord.

"It's some kind of spell," Bianca said distantly after waiting for Rubiec and his henchmen to wander further into the room. Wyatt nodded shortly, trying to intuit the thing's use. It was active, for sure, he could feel the magic on his skin, but he could also feel the wrongness. He looked across the massive triquetra and knew why.

"Yeah, an incomplete one," He mumbled back, nodding at the pattern. One third of the symbol was out of sync, slid outwards and away, keeping the three from interlocking properly. Bianca just nodded back quietly, brow pinching together.

"My King." A small voice rose from the small crowd milling around the building before a woman separated herself from the group, thin and weary looking. She stopped and bowed timidly, still a fair distance away. Wyatt just stared at her, muscles tense for a fight. He wasn't entirely sold on being able to fool anyone and if he had to fight his way out of there, he would. Bianca broke away from him slightly, circling around and making a good act out of being disinterested in the conversation even as she kept giving him meaningful looks behind the woman's back. Bianca arced an eyebrow and he mimicked the look at the woman, crossing his arms.

"Yes?" He said stiffly.

"Uh," The woman almost squeaked, "Everything is set for tonight, sir."

Bianca widened her eyes meaningfully, urging him on. Wyatt huffed and tilted his head, looking down at the woman like she was an idiot. The woman visibly shrank on the spot.

"I mean, um, the sigil, the spell to complete the sigil is going well. We merely have to wait for the correct time and then the Overworld will be forced to join us on this plane. The Elders won't be able to stop it like last time, this spell is much stronger."

Wyatt's blood nearly ran cold. They were doing _what? "_That's-" Bianca glared at him sharply and he pulled back on his outraged tone, clearing his throat, "That's good."

The woman seemed to ease up, happy that she wasn't being vanquished where she stood. "Yes it is! Then the war against good and evil will truly be over!" The woman skittered back to the edge of the hall to a small patch of what looked to be her demon coworkers leaving a quietly stunned Wyatt in her wake. Bianca slowly made her way to stand next to him, slight worry in her eyes.

"Well, that's not good." She sighed.

Wyatt could only nod.

**3:15 pm**

Rubiec had always prided himself on his intuition. Even in those cursed years locked in the deepest pits of the underworld, it was one of the things that kept him from perishing forever. That let him survive until the day the underworld had manifested itself topside and he was free. Well... free for a few minutes before he'd been forced into the servitude of the boy idiot who would be king, those first few minutes serving as nothing but a tease of what might be again when Wyatt dropped dead.

Until then, he'd serve. He didn't have a choice. He could say as much as he wanted about his new master inside his own mind, but, as powerful as Rubiec was, he wouldn't be able to actually beat him. Besides, Wyatt hadn't given him nothing. He'd amused himself the last few years by taking his revenge out on the descendants of those who locked him away in the first place. Those prideful, stubborn, Phoenixes.

They'd joined up with Wyatt at first, they'd proven moderately useful, until they buckled under the pressure to do things against their will. Even in the face of certain doom, they would all eventually find the captivity too much and rebel. One by one, they did, and when that happened, Wyatt tossed them to him. And he'd had _so_ much fun with them.

Now there was only one left, and she was probably the worst. Rubiec glared at her from across the room, intuition flaring as he saw her and Wyatt speaking. Something was wrong, very, very wrong.

"Pardon me." A man appeared at his side, Rubiec's fingers were around his throat the second after he did, but the man kept smiling.

Rubiec leaned in and tightened his fingers far enough he could feel the man's pulse under his fingers, "Who are you?"

"A man," He croaked, Rubiec lightened his grip slightly, "-with information about the Phoenix."

A jagged smile split Rubiec's face, the scars creasing the skin grotesquely, "Is that so? Tell me..."

**3:15** **pm**

The dead zone tunnel was a maze, a maze crowded with people with guns. Ida's rather simplistic instructions did help, but only in a very vague way, especially since the Resistance didn't see the need to light the oil lamps in the tunnels that weren't in use, and they certainly didn't seem to want anyone going in the direction he'd been told to go.

Leo had felt sorry for these people for only a moment. He understood the desperation these situations brought out in people, understood what fear of the unknown could do to the mind. Then he remembered Ms. McCaffey's ominous tones... and a lot of his sympathy went out the window. Chris had saved the people time and again and they were willing to do the worst to him simply because he had magic? The utter idiocy of it...

Leo pressed on down the hallway keeping quiet as he could as he felt down the wall for the next turn, ducking quietly against the walls as he heard footsteps pass in the opposite direction.

He could hate them, he supposed, but he wasn't ignorant of the nagging feeling in the back of his brain, the guilty question. Where had he been during all this? He just let his son hide away underground, keeping quiet while the people around him cursed all magic users to an early grave? No wonder Chris hadn't been exactly friendly back then...

The footsteps cleared and Leo continued on, counting off the last left and peering into the lit hallway. There was another tin door with two people standing outside of it. Oddly, neither of them were looking Leo's direction, they were both peering through the small window in the tin, listening the conversation inside the room.

"...look, I don't go digging around in that place without a good reason."

"I don't know, Micheal... that seems a little far fetched. Why would they hide it?"

"I checked the city records twice. It's not Chris Perry, it's Chris Halliwell! He's his _brother_. That's got to mean something... Remember? How those demons always seemed reluctant to kill him? We can _use_ him against Wyatt!"

The two guards look at each other with wide eyes, seemingly amazed at the revelation, it was only then that they spotted Leo, seconds before he slammed the taller of the two against the wall and pulled the gun out of his slack hands.

"Open the door." Leo pointed the gun at the man, not really feeling all that pacifistic at the moment. The man obliged, opening the door to reveal two grizzled looking Resistance members, one of which he recognized. Micheal Calliger, the high school principal. Leo stared at him in mute disbelief, was everyone from the school here?

Beyond the two men, though, Chris was leaning against a wall, completely unconscious, hands tied together behind his back. He looked moderately unharmed, aside from the line of blood running from forehead to jawline. Leo still wasn't entirely relieved... he wasted no time in ordering the ex-principal and his friend to the opposite side of the room and moved over to Chris.

"Hey, c'mon buddy, time to get up," He murmured to him, checking the cut on his forehead and wishing he could heal. For a few seconds Chris didn't respond at all, then, slowly his breath hitched and his eyes opened, foggily concentrating on Leo.

"Dad?" He said, voice slightly confused, "The..." Chris squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, opening them to focus on the people behind Leo, "They're made at me aren't they..." He asked without really needing an answer.

Leo winced, "I'd say...yes...very yes."

"Ah damnit, I know what day it is now."

Calliger stepped up after finally gathering his courage, chest puffed out like an angry bird. "You just think we're going to let you walk out of here? We gave you one chance already and I didn't even want to give you that."

Chris centered a flatly unamused look at him, "Man, this is not the day to be a dick."

The man turned red, fists clenching, too entirely preoccupied to see the two women come up behind him until they'd already smashed the plate over his head. Calliger fell down, revealing, in a series of weird people to find in tunnels, probably the oddest one Leo had seen yet.

"What is this?" Freja asked with some humor, "Looks like we aren't needed for this rescue." The valkyrie sent a glare at the remaining resistance fighters in the room, who slunk out quietly. She rolled her eyes at them, "Cowards."

**A/N:**

I'm back! Sorry guys, I am on the last bit of my degree and it's getting insane. This quarter isn't going to be any different as I have to produce an animation, a full pre-production layout, along with my other classes. Eeps. Anyway, here you go!


	12. The Dark Side

**Disclaimer: Blah blah. Not mine!**

**Chapter Twelve: The Dark Side**

**3:20 pm**

Bianca felt the chill up her spine before she felt the claws.

She threw herself forward without thinking, hearing the spined claws snag ever so slightly on the leather of her uniform before she tucked into a roll. A metallic clang sounded to her left, the displaced air around the blade ruffling the edges of her hair, staying only long enough for Bianca to registered it as a flash of dark silver before she conjured up two athame and attempted to staple her assailant's feet to the floor. She wasn't quite successful but it had a desirable effect, the man jumped back, giving her enough room to breath and survey the situation.

She whipped around to see Rubiec standing back, a dark blade in his hand, satisfied smile on his jagged, twisted face, looking happy to start the fight again. Bianca gathered herself for another attack, flipping an athame over in her palm, the demon reciprocated the challenge with a twist of his own blade... and then her line of sight was broken.

"_What,_" Wyatt stood between them, back to Bianca, the set of his shoulders screaming rage, "are you _doing_?"

Bianca almost dropped her stance for a moment, amazed at the dark emphasis in Wyatt's words. Every demon in the room had frozen in their spots, the lucky ones who were close enough to doors, had slunk out as soon as the fight had started. In that moment, she almost forgot Wyatt wasn't some kind of paragon of all evil, and it scared her.

"This was the deal," Rubiec's voice was raw grit, like someone had rolled burning coals in there and never quite allowed it to heal, "I join you, I get to do whatever I want with the Phoenixes when they defect."

Cold seeped into her gut, mind flashing back through everything she'd said and done in the past half hour, trying to find where she'd given herself away or if she even had.

"She hasn't defected." Wyatt shot back, hand wordlessly placed on Excalibur's hilt. Bianca pushed back and off to his side, eyes shouting dares at Rubiec. The demon looked at her in disgust.

"You really believe that?" He deadpanned, "I warned you, it's in their nature. Phoenixes are incapable of loyalty, I've experienced it personally." He gestured shortly at his own scarred face and suddenly Bianca felt very fond of her family. Then he kept talking. The demon's clawed finger pointed at her, "That whore is sleeping with Christopher. She's turned to his side, been hiding all his work against you these past years, all the while feeding him information. She's the one that helped him steal The Book yesterday. That's why she couldn't kill him."

'_Oh crap..._' Bianca thought, grip tightening reflexively on her athame. The room was utter silence, Wyatt's shoulders still a tense square. Bianca could feel eyes on her from all over, could feel the intent. The silence continued for several devastating moments, until the clear ring of Excalibur coming to life broke it. In the next second Bianca felt the sharp scratch of Excalibur's blade at her throat, she didn't even try to dodge.

"Leave," Wyatt growled at everyone and no one, looking around only when he didn't hear that they were following orders, "_now!_"

Nearly the entire room shimmered out, leaving only Bianca and Rubiec standing on either side of him. If Rubiec looked murderous before, he now looked _genocidal. _

"We had a deal, Halliwell."

"I've altered the deal," Wyatt turned a dark look on the demon, "Do you want to make it worse?"

Rubiec's shimmers were the color of his anger: red, black, and exuding a feeling of unease Bianca could feel in her bones. Only when the room had cleared, Wyatt's eyes casting around like they did when he was sensing, and then another good few seconds for good measure did Wyatt sag where he stood, bending over to put his hands on his knees and suck in several breaths.

Bianca let her athame disappear and gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder.

Wyatt looked up at her, relieved grin on his face, "I was _this_ close to full on quoting Darth Vader. _This_ close!"

"That was what you were doing? You were channeling Darth Vader?" Bianca pressed a hand to her temple.

"Hey, a little appreciation please?" Wyatt stood up, restashing Excalibur into the side of his belt, "It worked, didn't it? Nothing beats the classics."

Bianca just returned that with a roll of her eyes, "So... now what? We're blown, they're expecting me dead or worse and there's no way they'd believe that I got away from you."

"First off, you're not going to," Wyatt shrugged and gestured at the floor, where a disturbingly perfect copy of Bianca faded into existence, all accurate other than the fact that this version didn't move and looked like she'd taken Excalibur straight through the heart.

"Oh that's weird..." Bianca stared down at her dead self before shrugging it off, "But appropriate."

"Yeah," Wyatt agreed, though he didn't seem to like it. "Second...You need to go find Chris. The way he and Mom were talking before, he knew something about all this. Maybe he'll know how to fix it."

As much as Bianca really wanted to just run and leave the more obnoxious half of the Halliwell brothers to his own devices, she was surprised to find she was genuinely worried for Wyatt. She didn't say as much, wouldn't want it to go to the boy's head of course, so she just pinched her lips together and stalled. Wyatt too, seemed mildly surprised she hadn't shimmered out as soon as he'd offered the escape, but he had enough tact not to bring it up.

"And what will you do?" Bianca asked cautiously.

Wyatt shrugged, "Continue channeling the dark side?" He tossed a look over at the incomplete sigil on the floor, "and do as much as I can to keep the giant death laser from becoming fully functional."

"I seriously doubt it's a laser..." Bianca mumbled.

"Hey. Lay off my metaphor," Wyatt puffed out his chest, "It's my evil triquetra, I can call it whatever I want."

"If I hear something that sounds like millions of voices crying out in terror and getting suddenly silenced, I'll know we're doomed." Bianca drawled out the words in thick sarcasm, but they didn't have her usual bite. She allowed herself a half smile, arms crossed around her rib cage, before she looked up at Wyatt again, attempting to be serious for a moment, "Those demon powers. Remember what I said about them. Try not to let them get the better of you..."

Wyatt returned the smile, feeling like it was some kind of peace treaty. "There is no try, only d-"

"Oh shut up." Bianca punched him in the arm and shimmered out, out of range of Wyatt's senses in less than a second. Abruptly he was standing in the giant room, the silence encroaching in on him, and he felt very, very, alone.

**3:30 pm**

It turns out that, when looking down the business end of a Russian rifle held by a Valkyrie, people don't try to stop you from leaving. It was one thing Chris couldn't complain about, though the constant burn of eyes on his back and a still bleeding head wound did dull the achievement somewhat. He swiped again at the thin trail of blood, mostly harmless, but highly irritating as it kept creeping down the side of his face.

When he'd been in that... dream... pocket dimension... or some corner of the overworld, he'd just assumed that it had worked like a vision and he'd just wake back up where he stood in the tunnels. He hadn't expected to lose any time or he would have cut that meeting far shorter, but evidently, she'd needed him to be unconscious. It sure seemed like she was just waiting for it to happen... if she didn't orchestrate it herself.

It didn't matter, the plan hadn't changed. If the Source wanted a hand in this game, she'd have to wait in line until he'd exhausted every trick in his book.

The four of them, Chris, Leo, Freja, and another Valkyrie Chris thought was named Katarjyna, rounded the last corner before the straight shoot to the surface, passing another side hallway where a dozen faces peeked out at them. Chris kept his eyes strictly forward, not wanting to see anything more than the shadowy detail they were in now. Not wanting to see their angry expressions...

Even with all the memories he'd sorted through so far, it was amazing how many kept filtering in, wrapped in all sorts of dangerous, distracting emotions. Guilt, mostly. Despite popular opinion, he didn't _like_ lying, especially to people he cared for, and the people in these tunnels, he had liked at one point, even with the peripheral memories he had at the moment, he knew that. If he let himself look at them, it would get so much worse.

So Chris dug back into his mind for an old mantra, the one that had kept him going for so long. 'You had no choice.' It covered the guilt like a dusty moth eaten blanket, not really all that effective but it dulled the sensation nonetheless.

"You alright?" Leo asked in a low voice, coming up as far next to him as he could without bumping into the side of the narrow hallway. Chris looked over at him cautiously, the presence of the Valkyrie seeming all the more sharp at that moment. It was something they'd never really ironed out back then, after his identity was out in the open, the whole... Valhalla thing was the one topic Chris pointedly kept off the discussion table hoping it would just... go away. He'd never anticipated a face to face meeting like this.

"Yeah," He answered slowly, even as he swiped at the trickle of blood again, "What about you?"

Leo gave him a look that was one of his rare bouts of annoyance, "Yeah, I'm good. They seemed to be to concentrated on you than me..."

"They're doing what they think's best." Chris defended automatically, before shrugging, "They're wrong, of course, but it's their choice."

"That's really... diplomatic of you." Leo said, eyebrows raised. Chris kept from rolling his eyes at that. Diplomatic was Leo's keyword for 'Sounding like a Whitelighter' a phrase Chris had been railing against his whole life. Though now that he thought about it with his old memories available again, it made a lot more sense why he'd always done his dire best to keep himself as far removed from the Elders as possible. Something like that couldn't be scrubbed from your instincts by just getting rid of memories.

"Chris?" Leo prodded, a little worried at the lack of annoyed comeback.

"Hm? Oh. Sorry, just... with these old memories, things are making more sense now. Like why I think Elders are all assholes."

Leo's eyebrows shot up, restraining himself from chiding his son for disrespect. Chris caught it anyway.

"They can't hear us anyway. They bunkered down _years_ ago. Locked up and left us all to fend for ourselves." Chris shrugged, used to the feeling now. Leo frowned sadly, eyes unfocused.

"Yeah, I noticed that..." Leo said lowly. Chris watched him, guarded, not quite knowing how his father would deal with all this. Leo's faith in the elders had been rattled over the years, but over all, he still trusted that they knew what was best. The idea that they would close up shop likely wouldn't sit well with him. Chris expected a knee jerk defense for the elders, like the one he'd given for the people who lived in the dead zones, but he didn't get it.

"Chris," He asked seriously, eyes intense, "Did I... Was I one of the Elders who ordered that?"

_'Yes'_ Chris's thoughts answered automatically, but he held them back, "...That wasn't you, Dad."

Leo gave him a sharp smile, showing he appreciated the effort but didn't quite believe it. He shook his head, "No wonder you tossed me into Valhalla the first chance you got."

And there it was, Chris winced on reflex, "Yeah, Uh- sorry about that."

"Don't look so nervous," Leo couldn't help but laugh, "It's not like I can ground you for something you did before you were born... well, at least I wouldn't... we probably shouldn't tell your mother."

Chris silently held up a hand in absolute agreement.

The hallways got wider as they walked, the frequency of the oil lamps spacing out drastically so you could only see a foot or two around at a time, and that was optimistic. Chris reached out to run a hand along the wall, letting his fingers count the carefully carved notches in the wall, measuring the ratio of long lines to short ones. It was their own special code to tell a member of the tunnels how to get around, not quite Morse, but similar enough. Chris consulted his mental map... they had a little time. He just needed a little privacy.

"Katarjyna," Chris looked over his shoulder at the dark haired Valkyrie. She titled her head in answer. She was listening. Kat had never been the chatty type. "Could you fall back and make sure no one is following us?"

Without hesitation, the Valkyrie bowed her head in agreement and let the shadows overtake her, checking the halls behind them on silent feet. Chris had no doubt she already knew if people where following them or not, but she also knew that the request was for a reason, and gave him the space. He saw a flicker of a knowing gaze from Freja and nodded to her. She wordlessly shrugged and turned back to the front.

When Chris finally looked back to Leo, his father's jaw was hanging open.

"How..." Leo look back and forth at the now missing Valkyrie, "Did you just order her?"

"Order is such a strong word..." Chris couldn't help but be amused and shrugged, not exactly at the point of figuring out the relationship himself, "We have an understanding."

Leo didn't accept that as a full answer and Chris sighed and shrugged again.

"Valkyrie are supposed to fight at the end of the world. Ragnarok. _This _is it." He gestured vaguely at the tunnels and all the chaos above it. "They left Valhalla to fight, looking for an army to join, but at that point the Elders had sealed themselves away, Wyatt was evil, and most of the other witches were dead or turned. I was all that was left, so they found me."

Of course Leo was aware of the protocol for the Valkyrie, but it had never occurred to him that there might be a time when the Elders wouldn't be around for them to report to. They needed a General. Someone to coordinate with, to understand the battle and what was required. Of course, they still had free will, they were allowed to reject the options they were given as the choice was extremely important. Once they'd chosen an outside force to swear allegiance to, they tended to stick with that person until the bitter end.

"Imagine our surprise, Elder," Freja spoke without turning around, "To wait so long for a battle to find you've arrived too late. It was... " She struggled to find the word, turning partially, "horrible. Then we found that, small as it was at the time, there was still a defending force."

Leo took a long second to nod, "I apologize on behalf of the Elders that we could not be here to help you..."

Freja waved a hand, "We do not regret how things have gone. It took us time to find out place, but now that we have, none of us want it any different."

Chris's gaze was distant, once again trying to turn aside stray fragments of memories. When Freja said took Time, it was a massive understatement. None of them respected a thing he had to say and most were outright enraged that they were denied their final battle, but he won them over, one by one. Really, it was just a good thing that Valkyries tended to like abrasive, manipulative, bastards who didn't even try to win them over with diplomacy. He'd also never really claimed to have any leadership over them, he just told them what he'd like to be done and they decided if they trusted him enough to do it.

"Without them, I wouldn't have gotten as far as I did." Chris shook his head.

"And still far to go..." Freja nodded, "You have information."

Chris would never understand how she always knew that, he rolled with it anyway and got back to what he'd originally wanted to talk about. He framed a look at Leo, trying to figure out how to say this in the least pie in the sky, sunday school kind of way... he couldn't find any. "Screw it- Dad, is there a Source of All Good?"

Leo was getting a little tired of having his jaw drop. When this was all over he was going to sit in the Manor and refuse to be surprised by anything for a good week. In the meantime though, Leo narrowed his eyes, "There hasn't been one in a long long time but, technically yes. Though I've never seen him."

"Her." Freja supplied.

"Excuse me?" Leo returned.

"The Source of All Good is a Her." Freja repeated, "You are a young Elder so you would not have met her. She is rather odd..."

"That's an understatement," Chris mumbled, drawing the attention back to him. He sighed. There was some corner of his brain that was hoping she was just some demon trying to trick him. A shapeshifter or something. At least he'd know how to deal with that. But now... He clenched his hand in his pocket, feeling the cord of the triquetra necklace twining around his fingers. "Okay, let me just explain this real quick or I'm never going to get through this..."

**3:20 pm**

That had gone better than he'd expected. All he'd had to do was tattle tale on the little Phoenix to the scarred demon and all was done. Rubiec was so steeped in his own hatred that the barest hint of indiscretion on the girl's part made him shimmer across the room and attempt to drive a sword through her heart. All he needed was the girl to die and the time line would balance itself out. Those with the wrong set of memories would be replaced with the correct ones, the world would topple into the apocalypse and he'd finally be free.

Of course the Pale Man hadn't been expecting the girl to be competent.

She survived with the help of that damnable boy. The Man had allowed himself a minute to seethe before he realized the plan was still in order. She was going to leave and be all alone... undefended. She may be a good fighter, but The Pale Man knew that she was far from immune to his powers. So he waited for them to be done, watched the shimmers fade away... and followed.

**AN: **

Hahgeeze the quarter is insane. To all the people who have not gotten replies to the reviews. I VERY much want to still do that, and I will be, it will just be delayed somewhat. Whenever I get a spare moment it's a choice between answer reviews or write more of the fic. I do adore every single one of them though, and each review spurs me to write this a little faster. So, as always tell me what you think, lines you liked, predictions if you feel like gambling, and I will see you as soon as I can. :D

...PS Is the plural of Athame, Athame or Athames... I was totally guessing based on which sounded less dumb.


	13. Our Spot

**Disclaimer: Blah blah. Not mine!**

**Chapter Thirteen: Our Spot**

**4:10 pm**

It was in that vacant moment just as the sensation of shimmering faded away that the memory came to her. It had seemed inconsequential at the time but it came back so sharp that she could smell the firecrackers.

It was the night before the Fourth. Fireworks had been banned county wide years before after some kids accidentally torched their house with a bottle rocket, not that the law had any effect. She and Chris had taken advantage of a rare night where they were both free. They made believable excuses to their families, met in the park, paid twenty five cents to a latent San Francisco flower child for a dozen sparklers, and had a rare quiet night with absolutely no demons or occurrences of note whatsoever. It was fantastic.

In hindsight, she wasn't quite sure nothing happened. Halfway through the walk, tucked in a back corner and away from the teenagers setting paper tanks on fire with roman candles, Chris had stopped unexpectedly, a faraway stare taking over for a spare second before he refocused.

"What?" Bianca had asked, stepping back close enough that she could wrap an arm around his.

"Nothing," Chris shook his head, looking like he was trying to drop the thought but ended up unsuccessful, "We don't have a place."

She raised her eyebrows curiously, letting out a laugh, "Really? I almost got worried there for a second, you looked like someone had kicked your puppy."

Chris tried to give her an serious look that came off more amused, "Really, I mean, we don't have anywhere in common. I live in San Francisco, you live...what is it this month, Chicago?"

"Maine, actually," She added helpfully.

"Maine. Right." He corrected, though his expression said something closer to 'I'd ask you why you're in Maine but I don't think I want to know.' He pressed on, "Think about it for a second. The place we met got demolished."

"Shame, I didn't think that demon did _that_ much structural damage."

"We can't ever go back to that restaurant again because that new manager used to work at P3."

"True."

"There rest aren't any better. Everywhere else is either mine or yours." Chris continued without skipping a beat, "aren't couples supposed to have, I don't know, a _spot_?"

Bianca breathed in for a moment, considering the question. There were times in their unorthodox relationship where something like this would come up. The supposed tos or the normallies. It wasn't something either of them typically worried about for the moment, they weren't exactly things that had an expiration date, and they could be sorted out once things were a lot less volatile.

However, something in Chris's expression told her that it was going to bother him, so she stepped in a little closer, "Did you have a place in mind?"

He swept his gaze around for half a second to make it look like he was picking arbitrarily, but he did have some place in mind. He pointed across the path to what seemed like a simple bench, details hidden in the dim lighting. The more she stared though, the more she noticed, the flowers running on either side, slightly overgrowing their beds seemingly just for the spite of it. Four columns circled around the back meeting in the middle around a statue. Bianca squinted at it, noticing the wings after a moment.

"Okay," Bianca said without much thought at all, she didn't have to, "It seems... right."

Bianca opened her eyes, the memory fading only to be replaced with the same view, only twisted. She felt her shoulders sag, as she took a few paces forward on heavy feet, eying what was left of the statue, running her fingers across the jagged edge, wondering what happened there. She suspected it was like everything else in this reality: utterly messed up.

Quietly, she turned around and bonelessly slid down to the base of the statue, shutting her eyes for a moment. She didn't have much of a plan, it pretty much stopped and ended at "Find Chris." and from the destruction she was seeing even here, she was beginning to wonder if who she was looking for was even going to be what she expected. Even if he sounded similar, she had to wonder how much of that was real or just hope.

She tipped her head back to look at the half statue before sighing. Either way, she had to try.

"Chris," She said to the air, hoping the whitelighter hotline was still functioning, "I hope you can hear me. If you can," She paused. Wyatt had said he hadn't been able to sense anyone. If Chris couldn't either, she could test him... "If you can, you know where to find me."

She pinched her eyes closed for just half a second, hoping to hear the sound of orbing. That wasn't quite what she received. The crunch of shoes on brittle grass made her snap her eyes open. Standing in front of her was the Pale Man.

"Oh good!" He spoke with a amiable voice, "I'm glad you called. I've been meaning to speak with him."

**4:00**

Chris would like to say that he'd come clean and told them everything he knew, he had intended to, after all. He'd tossed in a small preface for Freja's benefit. She'd taken the whole time travel thing without a blink, much as Chris had expected. He explained how he'd woken up in whatever imaginary version of the Manor the Source had cooked up, told them about the girl and Clarence. He'd told them the Pale Man's story and how regretful they were. However, when he'd gotten to the part about their plan... He didn't know if it was latent habit or what, but he didn't breathe a word of the deal he'd made. He couldn't.

"That's it?" Freja prodded, giving him that sharp look that made all of her soldiers jump to do what she commanded. Chris just gave a cold look back, hoping that Leo wouldn't catch it.

He shrugged, more for his father's benefit, "I woke up before she was finished, I think. The place just whited out and I woke up down here."

"Curious." Freja mumbled noncommittally but she didn't press.

Leo shook his head, eyes narrowed, "That doesn't sound right..." Chris carefully made sure not to tense up at the tone in Leo's voice, "Are you sure they didn't hint at anything more? I doubt someone of that magnitude of power would just let a connection go like that. There had to be a reason for it."

Chris tightened his fingers around the pendant so tightly he was sure it would be permanently imprinted on his palm. This was dumb, he should tell him. Anything to drive one more wedge between the Source's plans and his own. Shouldn't he have learned by now that he tended to get results when he let his family in on the plan? They'd finally identified Gideon back then after he'd dropped all that pretext.

_'And then I got killed...'_ his thoughts echoed. He'd gotten killed and Leo had been a _mess_. It wasn't something the family talked about openly but Chris was naturally too curious about that darker era in his life that had lead Leo to drop his whitelighter status. Phoebe hadn't admitted only that Leo had lost someone and the Avatars took advantage of that grief. He knew now exactly who she'd meant.

He couldn't do that to him again. Couldn't admit, once again, that leadership Leo still believed in was trying to get him killed or ...insane or, whatever it had been that the Source was alluding to. Better to let him think it was a spell of Chris's own design, something Leo couldn't have done anything to stop if he'd known about it.

He didn't want any part in creating another Gideon.

As much as he believed Leo was three thousand times better of a man than Gideon ever was, but... loss could do terrible things. Maybe Gideon wasn't so bad at the start either...

Leo's curious eyes were on him and Chris returned the look, fingers loosening in his pocket. "There was one thing," He said with a trepidation he didn't have to fake, "They wanted me to know, that guy's father was Gideon..."

And there it was, the perfect distraction. Leo tensed, arms stilling from their typical sway back and forth as he walked. "Gideon..." Leo just said stiffly.

"Yeah," Chris returned carefully, "Explains some things, doesn't it."

The reasoning had seemed to occur to Leo at the same time. He nodded and then quickly shook his head, voice coming out completely exasperated, "It's still completely inexcusable."

"Let's pretend I do not know what you're talking about. You are talking about the Elder Gideon?" Freja chipped in, knowing she was on thin conversational ice but not really caring.

The two men traded a brief look before Chris shrugged and admitted it, "Gideon was the one who turned Wyatt. He tried to kill him when he was a kid because he thought he'd be too powerful."

"Ah," Freja's eyes narrowed before turning back to the front, "Reprehensible coward." and that was all she had to say on the matter. Chris was quickly remembering why he liked the Valkyries.

Katarjyna joined them silently just as the tunnel turned into an old concrete service hallway, a brown door lying at the end of it with a helpful, yet completely surreal red lit exit sign next to a placard holding aged fire escape routes.

"You might want to shield your eyes," Freja said with some amusement but gave them no time to comply before she kicked the metal push bar and the door slammed open, the complaining whine of the rusted hinges sounding like an alarm.

They walked out into the open air and sun to find themselves hidden under the spine of the broken Golden Gate bridge. Only three steps away from the door and they felt the magic return to them. The Valkyries smiled at that, cracking assorted joints in celebration. They were magical beings and they despised being down in the tunnels. Their human recruits however, were hidden amongst the masses. They were the main reason everyone in the tunnels hadn't been killed yet.

"You are now free and clear," Freja announced, "Now what."

"Yeah," Chris sighed, staring out at the water, "That's the trick. I-" Any argument he was about to make stuttered to a halt as the silence in his whitelighter senses was all of a sudden shattered, the volume of it knocking the breath out of him, though the voice it was in had something to do with that as well. Bianca's voice, calm at first, but then... Leo was already halfway into concerned Elder mode when Chris put up a hand.

"Change of plans, you stay here, I'll be back in a second," Chris tried to say with all authority.

"Chris, let me-" Leo tried but Chris simply shook his head.

"No, just give me two seconds, I'll call you if I need you." He didn't give Leo a chance to explain and he didn't know why he'd accepted the help, he just needed to make sure the person he was going to meet was actually the version he hoped for. He had to make sure. "Just trust me for a second."

He orbed out.

**4:00**

Rubiec was livid.

He'd thought this was an exodus, something new, something freeing. To have a sky, the freedom to move more than six feet in either direction, to have anything with a pulse in the general vicinity... it had sounded _glorious_ when that Halliwell boy had proposed it to him.

Sure, the boy was a witch, a Warren witch, no less, but you couldn't tell it from the color of his black heart. Besides, Wyatt was human. Humans die. He could deal with it until he keeled over. Still, even with what sounded like a good proposition, Rubiec was wary. He'd spent most of his time alive in that hole in the underworld, only escaping once in a while. The last time though, the last time made him think about ever leaving again.

The Phoenix coven had made a deal with him back then too. They'd been so bitter, so hungry for power he could provide and he did... then when time had come to hold their end, they'd cut him up and dropped him back down the hole into eternity.

He'd only agreed after Halliwell promising him every bit of the revenge he was hoping for.

Rubiec raked his fingernails over his face in memory, eyes burning. Yet again, the human had gone back on their deal, and here he was led to believe the Warrens were the more honorable line of witches that had come out of Salem.

He stood, stock still, outside of the door to the sigil room, fingers taking on less of a normal appearance and shifting back to something much more claw like. With a subtle click, the doors in front of him parted just wide enough for Wyatt to stand before him.

The Halliwell leaned against the door handles, a hand on either side to bar the way back into the sigil room. It was purely a line in the sand of course, Rubiec could shimmer in there at any time, but he knew that doing so wouldn't be seen as anything but treason.

He leaned just enough to see behind the witch, eyes locking on the crumbled form on the floor, copper hair dulled as it soaked up the puddle of blood underneath her. His expression darkened dangerously, eyes snapping back to Wyatt.

Wyatt stared right back, fingers drumming on the right handle in a false sense of boredom, "Problem?"

Rubiec stayed silent, the only tension in his body showing through his eyes.

"I think we do," Wyatt supplied for him, "But both of us know that you aren't going to do anything about it or you would have done it already."

"Just give me the soul, witch." Rubiec said placidly.

Wyatt's eyes narrowed, his grip tightening on the doors, "No."

"I won't ask again." The challenge in his voice was completely evident but Wyatt pointedly ignored it.

"_Good._" Then the Twice Blessed reached up a hand and snapped, the blood on the floor spontaneously engulfed the body in flames until the fire was so bright it would hurt for a normal person to look at. As it was, Rubiec's eyes were locked on it, anger finally showing in the set of his shoulders. Wyatt allowed him the view for a second before calling his attention back to him. "Don't ever challenge me again."

Then the doors slammed into Rubiec's face. His talons glowed red and yellow like hot coals, a snarl building in his throat. He turned and let it out, scraping his claws along the thick marble walls in a feral rage. The heat left a four charred smoking gouges all the way down the side of the hall as he walked.

This was not over.

**4:20**

The man wasn't as fast as he had been before, Bianca noticed right off. The instantaneous transfers from place to place he'd done in his fight with Wyatt weren't anywhere near as quick. Each time his feet landed, the space between jumps seemed longer and longer, by seconds only, but seconds was all that she needed.

"OW!" The man hauled back, clutching at the side of his face, looking more shocked than he probably had in years. Bianca flipped the now blood covered athame over in her hand, cautiously confident even as her ankle shot spikes of pain up into her spine. It was an injury she'd gotten from the one time she hadn't managed to dodge the Pale Man's grip, an injury that felt curiously like the time she'd broken her ankle in three places when she was seven. She didn't let herself think about it too hard. She couldn't afford the distraction.

The man pulled his hand back from his face, examining the blood smeared across his palm with growing anger. Bianca shifted back to a more acceptable stance. He'd been playing with her before, but she had a feeling he was done with that.

The man tensed, fingers bowing in a way that told her he was about to disappear again. One minute he was across the garden, the next he was close enough the man's bloodstained hand was hovering right in front of her face. She shifted back too quick, weight crashing onto her bad ankle and sending her to the ground. Everything seemed to fad into slow motion, she could see the red fingers adjust to reach for her throat even as she tried to catch herself from her fall, until, abruptly, she felt herself being yanked back, and time sped back up to normal.

The Pale Man pitched forward awkwardly and stuck there, hunching over where he stood like the maneuver had taken the wind out of him. Bianca would have had the urge to gloat if her mind wasn't trying to catch up on how it had happened. She looked down idly at where her hands had clasped on to a set of arms twined around her stomach, and tensed for only a moment.

"It's me," Chris's voice answered lowly, head dipped down to lean against hers but still be able to keep an eye on the Pale Man. Bianca let out a breath, leaning back into him in relief, taking the pressure from her ankle. She didn't look back at him though, focused just as he was on the enemy at hand.

"You alright?" Chris asked after a moment.

"I'm fine," Bianca returned conversationally, "You?"

She felt him smile against her temple, "Better."

The Pale Man staggered back up to his full height, showing some kind of emotion besides the cheerfully crazy persona he'd been putting out before.

"That wasn't fair." The whine in his voice was roughened with deep annoyance, hands balled into fists at his sides.

They ignored him. Chris loosened one of his arms from around her waist and shifted so he was beside her, wordlessly keeping the other arm there both to support her ankle and provide a quick escape if they had to orb out. His eyes darted from the cut on the Man's face to her dagger and grinned with unabashed pride. "Nice."

"Glad you appreciate it."

The Pale Man was looking a little more red than he was before, even under the blood, eyebrows pinching together. "You can't ignore me. I've figured it out, you know. Who you are."

Bianca felt Chris's grip on her waist tighten slightly and her face quickly snapped back to battle mode. Half of her just wanted to forcibly shimmer the both of them out, the other winning half trusting that Chris had something in mind.

"You're Christopher Halliwell," The man's smile started creeping back up as he spoke.

"Yeah?" Chris answered with a false calm, "Took you long enough just to figure out my name."

The Man wasn't perturbed by the comment, "It was your book. It was the one that taught me what to do. Anytime I was didn't know what to do or how to do it, I just zapped to that time, to that library, and you told me how. I'm a huge fan."

Bianca stole a confused look over to Chris. He was looking angrier by the second, jaw clenched, eyes dark, and, for some reason he seemed to be clenching his fist in his pocket.

"I already said it, I haven't written any book."

"Not yet, no. I do like to take it with me when I can. It saves a trip if I need it." The man smiled, "It's interesting, though, if you are who you are, that means you're like me. I won't kill you now, you know. I do need to kill her though, you understand. I-"

"Shut up." Chris pulled his hand out of his pocket in a flash and opened his palm just enough to let something bright and silver dangle below it. The Pale Man froze in his spot, eyes widening to a ridiculous proportion. Chris let it sway there for a second, long enough for it to stop spinning and identify a symbol she was becoming better and better acquainted with. "You know what this is, right?"

The Man's eyes narrowed dangerously, "Where did you get that?"

"From someone who's really not happy with you right now," Chris answered back, twitching his hand so the pendant swayed again. The Pale Man stumbled back a pace, "You're going to crawl in whatever hole you came from and stay there until we've fixed this. If you try anything like this again, I _will_ use it. You understand?"

The air stilled as the options seemed to run through the Man's head, eyes locked on the necklace. Then, with a hate filled parting glare, he disappeared. They both waited for an extra few seconds, expecting him to reappear any moment, but it seemed he was doing as he was told. As soon as the tense feeling had dissipated, Bianca turned on her good ankle and leaned tiredly on Chris, looping her arms around his back.

"You have no idea how glad I am to see you," Bianca mumbled tiredly before leaning back a few inches to look him up and down, "You are you right? Not this world's you?"

Chris looked surprised for only half a second before he cracked a smile, casting a look around for an appropriate answer, "See, that's a tricky question."

Bianca's eyebrows shot up, fingers loosening to let go, "Explaining would be good."

**AN:** Faster this time, and a smidge longer, I think. We had an off day at school this week so I had a little more time to work on it. I have nothing to say here that wouldn't spoil things tremendously so I'll just leave things at that. Yet again, comments, lines, predictions, always wonderful and they keep my mind turning on this fic. See you next time!


	14. Plan A

**Disclaimer: Blah blah. Not mine!**

**Chapter Fourteen: Plan A**

**4:45**

"You alright?" Chris said the words lowly as if it would make up for the sheer absurdity of the question. Looking back at the cliff notes version of the current doom hanging over them... time travel, alternate evil versions of people floating around, incredibly small amount of time in which to set it back right... yeah, he couldn't find anything in there that sounded even remotely _right._ It had some effect at least. Bianca looked up at him with a brief flicker of amusement before descending back into the silence that had overtaken her.

He let her, even though he knew that Leo and the Valkyries were likely getting more skittish by the moment. They wouldn't leave him alone for long. He shelved the worry along with everything else, he just didn't have the mental strength to support it at that moment. He had numbed himself so thoroughly that he could really only think of one catastrophe at the time, and the old memories had been taking up that slot for a while.

For the moment, he was warding them off only with the supreme relief at the fact that he'd found Bianca alive and well... or well-ish. He was pretty sure her ankle was broken but she'd been pretty insistent about knowing what they were dealing with before she would even think about letting him take her to get healed. He considered it a small victory that he'd coaxed her over to the bench so she could at least stop standing on it.

After he'd seen her bleeding on that floor, and with that sideways taunt the pale man had made, Chris had though the worst, deep down. He thought she had been the last life that tipped the balance on the timelines... and she was, he imagined. It would explain a lot. She died long enough for the world to shift but came back to life soon enough that it threw the whole thing out of wack. It was why they weren't in November 16th in this timeline, they were earlier. He'd figured it out finally. They'd been dropped on the day he was supposed to travel to the past, the last stable day in the timeline. It also explained how some people in the middle of it had kept their memories.

Time simply hadn't decided who it was going to side with yet.

It was all so very, very messed up, and all a little to complex for him at the moment. Chris shelved those thoughts along with the others and pulled one leg to the other side of the bench so he could face Bianca properly. She was in the same position she had been for a while, head partially bowed, her good leg folded in front of her on the bench, the other stretched out to the side. She was deciding something, though Chris didn't have the first clue as to what. He figured he'd let her go for a bit longer before he asked any more stupid questions like 'Are you alright'.

Thankfully, Bianca saved him from that embarrassment, raising her head up a bit before shaking it, "Unbelievable."

"What..." Chris prodded softly.

"When I saw your family," She looked back up at him eyes narrowed, not at him, seemingly more at whatever thought had just occurred to her, "They said I was _that _Bianca. That I came back. They _knew_ me."

"They said what?" Chris had the sudden urge to slap himself in the forehead, instead he just let out an aggravated breath, "See, and they wonder why they don't get told all the big secrets. When was this?"

"Right after you almost bled to death on the floor." Bianca responded, deadpan.

"Not an excuse," Chris shot back, still annoyed.

Bianca frowned at him, "It was a huge shock, people do things under pressure like that."

"Oh yeah, and then they can lock people in the attic just cause they're paranoid."

Bianca snorted a laugh, "Oh yeah, and you have the right to talk about paranoid reactions."

"Wait, wait, wait," Chris halted in the middle of the argument, hands coming up to motion for a halt. He looked quickly around and then back at Bianca, confused, "Wait, why are you defending my family and not me." Granted, he didn't like having his girlfriend mistreated, but he did generally know where his family was coming from by that. It was almost protocol these days. A new person comes in and you don't know if they're an innocent or not, you take them to the most protected place in the house, the attic, so they no one can hurt them, and put them in a crystal cage so they can't hurt you. Even after he'd vouched to Piper on Bianca's behalf it had seemed the best route, Piper had said that they would keep her up there at least until they'd taken all the kids to Magic School, if only to keep the variables to a minimum.

Still... Chris couldn't see anywhere in that equation that would make the Bianca feel anything but mistreated, yet she seemed eerily accepting of the whole thing.

The amusement on Bianca's face dulled somewhat, shoulders hitching in a low shrug, fingers twisting together. "The way they said it, it's pretty obvious I came back too at some point, and when I did... it wasn't to do anything good." She shook her head again before looking back up at him, "She said I tried to kill her son."

Chris's heart sank but he didn't break eye contact.

"She wasn't talking about Wyatt, was she?"

For a moment, he considered lying. Even though the likelihood of it actually working on Bianca was slim. He really considered it. Like usual, though, it seemed like she could read his mind, and the look on her face warded him away from any tactic.

"No." He answered thickly, "But you didn't-"

"Chris," She cut him off, sharp and low, "Don't try to sugar coat this. For a second, I saw what they thought of me written on their faces. Then there was that..." her voice faded somewhat, suddenly unfocused. She wasn't looking at anything anywhere near them. Chris had to wonder if that's what he looked like when one of this old memories hit him. Lost and confused. He slid a hand over her arm to her fingers, giving her an anchor point.

"I thought it was a dream," She laughed airily, "but I guess it was a memory. When I was a kid, the Charmed Ones came after my mom, I never knew why, though," another laugh, "I can guess now. My mom took me to a safehouse with my uncle. I was supposed to stay there but I got worried so I shimmered back to the apartment. When I got there, there was someone lying on the couch. A man. Unconscious, nearly dead."

Chris let out the breath he'd unintentionally been holding, unease gripping him. Bianca finally looked back up at him, amazed at her own realization.

"That was you."

"Yeah," Chris answered, wishing he had something more profound to say.

Bianca faded off again, momentarily going back over the memory, her eyebrows came together, "You," She searched for the words, "You weren't doing well...I saw that mark on your chest and then... then my mom found me and took me away. I remembered it recently, but I thought it was just a bad dream, you know? Placing someone you loved into a traumatic memory... I always wondered what happened to you." She snapped back over to him, "You didn't..."

"Die?" Chris added as she halted on the word, once again his brain was supplying him with all the heart wrenching memories he might need and all those he didn't. So much that he had to pinch his eyes shut to wrestle them back into their places, he made a point to grasp her hand a little tighter to make sure she didn't misinterpret the motion. "No..." he finally forced them out even as the memories did their damndest to do as much damage on the way out as they did on the way in.

"No I didn't die, not that day at least." He shook the last bits out of his head, "Bianca, you weren't trying to kill me, you were just doing what you thought was right."

Bianca frowned, "What I _thought_ was right. But it wasn't."

Chris shook his head again in frustration, pulling himself closer to her on the bench. "All we wanted, _we_, was to make all this right. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere without you. I'm the one who left you back here in this hell hole to get captured and _'convinced'_ by Wyatt that the only way to save my life was to drag me back here." Chris poured every ounce of conviction into his voice, allowing the emotion of every memory swirling in his head to mix in, if only to blunt the old guilt.

They had thought that one person going back would be better that it would make less waves in the timeline and Chris obviously had the easier in. Still, he'd never felt right leaving her there.

"You may have brought me back here, but it was only because you thought Wyatt would have some sort of humanity left and not kill me when you did. When he proved that he didn't, you _died_ helping me get back out. So don't even start to blame yourself for something you didn't have a choice in." He was distantly aware that his grip was now much stronger than he had intended but he couldn't do anything about it. Everything he'd shelved up to that point was all toppling down on him, and he didn't have the strength to stop it.

He was so wrapped up in it, he was almost startled when Bianca freed her hands from his and replaced them on either side of his head. Her lips shortly followed and he met them eagerly. In that moment, all the dark memories, the blood, the death, the ever present tick of whatever oppressive doomsday clock he'd been living under, it all faded. Everything that had been clouding his mind was poured into that kiss, leaving him with nothing but a blissful silence. They remained like that for a while, feeling the clock tick but not really caring.

"Okay," Bianca whispered as soon as she had breath to, sticking close, arms wrapped around his neck. "You win."

Chris smiled tiredly, drained but at peace for the first time that day.

She leaned against his shoulder, and sighed, "I won't blame myself if you won't."

"Deal." He mumbled finally opening his eyes to look up at the sky, "I'm going to fix this."

"We." Bianca corrected with some amusement, pulling back far enough to give him a stern look, "_We_ are going to fix this. So what do we have to do?"

"First?" Chris tilted his head towards her still curiously black and blue ankle, "We get you healed, then we think about saving the world." He stood up, pulling her slowly with him so she could keep her weight on the correct foot. She crinkled her nose as soon as she was upright, looking up at him like a child who'd been told to eat their vegetables.

"We have to orb don't we." She nearly groaned.

"You always make it sound way worse than it is." Chris shot back in defense.

Bianca merely rolled her eyes, "Oh yeah, it's just great if you like the feeling of being carbonated and then sucked up through a _straw_."

Chris coughed down a chuckle, but he couldn't stop the slightly evil grin on his face. "You could shimmer but you'd have no idea where to go."

"Fine, fine," Bianca reluctantly took a stronger hold on his arm, eying him warily, "On the count of three. One, tw-"

Chris orbed.

**4:45**

It took six tries, twelve floors, stopping three times to eavesdrop, and him looking and feeling like a complete idiot before Wyatt found what he was looking for: his room. It was set deep in the back of the building, everything getting more and more grandiose as he approached it, less demons milling around, all ending in an elaborate set of double doors. He was beginning to wonder if a sense of false granduer came with the evil package or if it was some sort of weird learned taste. He could never imagine himself, evil or not, having any sort of design sense that included carved marble gargoyles. It was a minute comfort, but he latched onto it. Anything to separate his own self image from that of his evil one. He traveled the last bit of the hallway and was behind them before he'd considered any alternative, tugging them shut as quickly as would look natural, and then he simply sank.

Wyatt's back hit the door with a muffled rattle of hinges, legs deciding they didn't feel like carrying his weight anymore. He remained upright only long enough to pull Excalibur from his belt so he didn't unwittingly stab himself and let himself go, sliding down the panels of the door and into a graceless heap. He stuck there for a good long time trying to ignore the thrum in his hands from using whatever derivative of pyrokinesis that had been.

He had meant to just make it seem like he'd used it but when he'd called on his good powers to manipulate the illusion, the evil ones had leaped up first. He'd been lucky Rubiec had been so completely incensed that he hadn't noticed the slip up, though now he suspected he had to deal with whatever revenge the demon was going to exact. Whatever, he didn't care, he was pretty sure the demon was too much of a coward to try it though. Even from that momentary use of what was likely a stolen ability, Wyatt was keenly aware of just how much... power he held at that moment. Sure, he was used to being more powerful than your average witch, but this was staggering, or even beyond that, it was _intoxicating._

Wyatt took that moment to loudly smash his head back against the door, driving the thought out of his head.

Bianca had warned him that demonic powers could twist you, and she wasn't lying. He sunk deeper against the door, scrubbing his hands through his hair and down the back of his neck, hitting all the tense muscles that had been tied in knots simply by his act of attempting to not freak out.

'Okay, Wyatt,' He mentally coached himself, running over the situation as much as he could, 'No big deal. I'm just evil, destroyed the world, started the next witch hunts, and seemed to be happy with it. Not too bad... Fixable. Totally fixable.'

Wyatt punched the floor, too wound up to bother wincing. The exertion did help somewhat, allowing him a tiny moment to breathe and try to filter some of the pent up anxiety that had flooded him since the day had started. The reprieve was only momentary before the sucking helplessness descended back on him.

He was not used to feeling helpless, he hadn't really had the time to acclimate to it like most people, he'd only experienced the feeling in recent years when he and Chris had really stepped up to let their mother and aunts retire. Event after event making him realized that simply having the power in the world meant nothing if you didn't have the experience to back it up. When he lost that first innocent... it was bad.

He'd been a mess, but a quiet one, covering it up with smiles and bad jokes. He wasn't very good at it, his mom was aware of the act in a second. Chris at least made an attempt at saving his dignity by covering for him with Piper and hauling him back to the apartment to shake the guilt out of him.

"Demons are evil. Things go wrong. People die." Chris had said to him sternly, "Deal."

Probably not the most sensitive thing that had ever come out of his brother's mouth, but it had oddly helped.

"You don't have to break down crying in front of everyone, but you _have_ to deal with it."

Wyatt breathed and leaned his head back against the door. "Okay, Chris..." He mumbled to the air, "This is me dealing." If he wanted to work through this, he needed to know what exactly what was going on. He needed to know who this version of himself was at least in some aspect. Who was this Wyatt Halliwell who apparently ruled the world.

He opened his eyes and looked around the room for the first time, slightly surprised by what he saw. The room did not follow the building's motif at all. The way it had been going he was expecting the room to have a four poster "I'm compensating for something" bed comprised of raw human souls, nightstands shaped like blood altars, and gargoyles brimming from the walls. Instead, it was... home.

It somehow was the manor without looking like it at all. He pinned the feeling on the eclectic gathering of furniture that looked like it had all been salvaged from yard sales or passed down from someone's grandparents. All sturdy enough to survive a demon being tossed onto it or cheap enough that it didn't matter. Wyatt frowned at the sight, maybe he and this evil version of him weren't all that different after all.

In stilted, tense motions, Wyatt pulled himself to his feet and walked farther into the room. His steps were hesitant, like it was a trap, walking past an overstuffed blue couch and staring at patterns on the pillows. Apparently this Wyatt was an evil overlord with a thing for extra throw pillows, this was all too surreal. He pushed passed the couch to a chest of drawers, tugging one open curiously to see what sort of evil sock drawer lay in wait for him.

The drawer unexpectedly rattled and crunched as it slid out, the contents shifting with the motion. Wyatt saw something shine inside and pulled it the rest of the way out, several broken picture frames revealing themselves. He picked one up, trying unsuccessfully to see through the fogged spiderweb of cracks before he pulled the back off the frame and freed the picture within.

His heart sank. It was a family photo of course, he shouldn't have been surprised, but he was. It was a near identical copy to the one that sat on his father's desk at magic school with several pointed changes. No father, for a start, no Mel. Piper stood alone, one head on the tops of each of her boys' heads. Phoebe stood at her side, only one daughter hanging off a hip. Paige was completely alone on the other side.

The rest of the frames were similar. All photos he remembered taking but with missing faces. He searched his own younger face, searching for some hint of evil in there, some reason why things turned out this way. He couldn't find it. As a matter of fact, he looked... happy. Chris didn't seem to hate him, let alone look like he was about to actively stage a rebellion against him.

He poured the broken glass into the drawer and put the photos back into the frame before propping them back up on the dresser's surface.

Things seem to be the same, in the past at least. Same-ish. This wasn't some evil mirror world. It seemed more like what could have happened, what could have if something... changed. Something that would erase three fourths of his family and twist him so badly that he became... this.

What had happened? More importantly, could it happen again? Could it only be a matter of time? Could there be some switch in his head that made him _this?_

Wyatt turned, eye catching on something in the corner, laying closed on the desk. The Book of Shadows. A genuine smile broke onto his face, if there was any book in the world that would know what to do, it'd be this one. He practically pounced on it, fingers pulling the cover open... only it didn't.

He tried again, futily, to pull open the book, but it didn't budge. He could touch the book, but he could never look inside of it. Apparently his ancestors had a sense for the poetic. He swept the face of the book apologetically, freeing it from any dust before he placed it back.

The room's previous coziness seemed like some desperate facade now. Like someone gathering things that reminded them of a world lost and trying to pretend that it wasn't. The more he looked, the more he noticed the disuse, a thick layer of dust covered everything but the bed, giving him the distinct image of the evil version of himself just staring quietly at the sad replacement for the manor he hand constructed, and realizing how empty it was.

Suddenly he felt very claustrophobic, scooping up Excalibur, and escaping the oppressive room. It felt better to be in action anyway. He had at least a minimal idea of the layout now, thanks to his bumbling around the place earlier. Wyatt looked around the halls momentarily, trying to decide a course of reaction. Finally he just shrugged and chose a hallway. Time for a little self sabotage.

**5:00**

"You are worried." Freja noted astutely, though her tone didn't quite fall into line with her words. The fact that she spoke was odd enough to cause him to pause, but the way she said it made him stop his pacing altogether. He'd been pacing mindlessly ever since his son had said those two horrible words ("trust me") and orbed off, just to keep the nerves down. Apparently it bothered Freja enough for her to give him one of the most openly confused looks he'd ever seen on a Valkyrie.

"Yeah," Leo admitted finally after realizing a staring match with a demigoddess was a bad idea. He stuck his hands on his hips to keep himself still, "I'm a little worried." He waited for a good few minutes for Freja to respond but she seemed happy with just staring at him. He gave up and went back to pacing, looking back at her every so often to see that she was tracking his movements with that same perplexed look.

"Why?" She asked curiously.

"Because Chris just left to who knows where..." Leo stopped shortly and made a vague gesture at the broken landscape around them.

Freja didn't look any less confused, "He can defend himself. You don't think he can?"

"No," Leo sighed and dropped his hands noisily to his sides, "No, I know he can take care of himself it's just... He's my _son_, I'm going to worry."

A graceful tilt of Freja's head was his only answer he received, like she was considering the deep ramifications of what he'd said and slowly coming to some conclusion. After a minute, her lips drew up into a softer, almost indulgent smile, "I see many things are different in your time. I am glad for it."

Leo sank under the gaze, her meaning sinking in like a knife. Valkyries weren't entirely in tune with the concept of a blood bound family unit. The fact that you were supposed to love someone by accident of birth was simply something they did not deal with so they did not understand. They operated on love by mutual respect. This person impresses you, covers your back in battle, trusts your intentions completely, therefore they are family.

Leo had seen this time and time again when he'd spent that... time with them. They had respected him, still respected him not only because he could hold his own in a fight if he so chose, but because he never broke to their will. They didn't care that they hated them at the time, he was family, just... family they kept in a cage.

So the fact that Freja, the oldest and mother of all Valkyrie, with only her superficial knowledge of a nucleic family unit, had picked up on his faults as a father... well, it wasn't lost on him. The fact that she noticed a difference meant so much more as well.

"Believe me," Leo said genuinely, "I'm happy too."

Freja nodded in approval before abruptly tilting her head, listening, "Ah," she spoke, "I should have guessed." It was right then that the orbs filtered back in, depositing not one but two people. Chris, plus one nauseated looking witch with a death grip on his arm.

"Three." Chris grinned down at her and received an empty glare in return.

"Not funny." She growled.

"Little bit." Chris let the conversation go before he got himself in trouble and aimed a look over at the other people on the nearly deserted street, "Hey dad, can I get a hand here?"

It had taken Leo a second to really identify the girl, mostly because he hadn't been anticipating her being there at all. The shock of it only lasted long enough for him to realize that she was pointedly standing only on one foot, leaning most of her weight into Chris. His brain immediately transferred to whitelighter mode and he motioned her over. He and Chris helped her sit down on a toppled highway divider, trying to be as gentle as possible. Bianca still winced if you looked carefully enough, it was controlled in her face, but the knuckles on her hand clenched white every time she accidentally bumped her leg. Leo didn't waste any time and leaned down next to her foot, easily seeing the web of black bruises peeking from an unzipped boot. A few moments of healing and the color receded back to its normal healthy state leaving only an amazed looking Bianca in its place.

Leo was almost amused by her expression but managed to tamp it down. This was probably the first time she'd ever had the chance to be healed by a whitelighter, and for a girl who had been patching up her own wounds all her life, it must have been an amazing experience.

"Thank you," Bianca said gratefully, though her look was more cautious than anything.

Leo shot back a disarming smile, "Any time."

She rolled her ankle experimentally before she tried out a smile in return. The amazement was still on her face and it took a minute for Leo to understand. This wasn't the healing she was amazed at, but it seemed more like she was simply shocked that he even offered the help at all. Still in whitelighter mode, he had the urge to address the topic, not quite sure where it was coming from, but the setting of the conversation was all wrong. He could address it later, he hoped.

"We have to come up with some kind of battle plan," Chris broke in, drawing them all back to the task at hand. Freja nodded, brightening up considerable at the sound of her favorite word beginning with B. "As far as I can tell, we have until midnight to change the time line back to the way it was."

Bianca stood easily from her spot, gravel popping under her shoes on her way to stand next to Chris. "Any idea how to do that?"

"Same way we got here. He changed things on the good side of this time so that it looked more like the bad side. We just have to go the opposite way and change things here." The words were confident but Chris' tone and posture certainly was not. He'd crossed his arms agitatedly halfway through, a grim look deepening on his face, "It's not going to be easy. All he had to do was kill a bunch of people who had a heavy influence on this time, and since we can't bring anyone back to life, we're going to have to figure out a different way." Chris cast a short look over to Bianca when he said that and Leo couldn't help but notice her quick flinch.

"Well," Freja frowned, not used to being out of the loop, "What is your time like?"

"Not evil." Bianca mumbled bitterly. Leo could only nod his head in agreement. How was one supposed to separate all the different types of bad this place was from their own. It all bled together after a point. The four of them fell into a quick silence, trying to unthread the essential parts of the puzzle in their own minds.

After a second, Chris spoke up, "There are a lot of demons alive that aren't in our time."

"How do you know that?" Leo asked, confused, he hadn't recognized any of the demons they'd run into, let alone remembered anyone vanquishing them.

"Because," Chris answered distractedly, obviously caught up in another one of his memories, "The first thing I did when I came back was go and vanquish all of them I could find." He shrugged, the ghost of anger in his voice, "then I siced the sisters after the ones I couldn't get myself."

"Ah." Leo returned quietly, once again confronted with the reality that he hadn't known the half of what Chris did back then, nor cared at the time. It did explain an old mystery. Around that point, the Elders had been very curious as to why a whole slew of demons had dropped off the map. Question answered. "I'm sorry you had to do that on your own."

"I wouldn't have let you help anyway. Forget it." Chris waved it off with an agitated hand, "That part isn't so bad. They're probably all camped out in the city, we'd just have to draw them out." He looked over at Freja who was smirking even before he suggested anything, "Think you're ready for that battle?"

"_Far _past ready." She smiled, "I already sent Katarjyna to gather the soldiers."

Chris returned the smirk and added a nod, "Good. That might be all we need, but we have to make sure. We need to make a huge change all at once if we want to kick this back over to our time."

"I have an idea," Leo said brightly even before it was fully formed, "The Planes. We can separate them. If we can break the spell holding them together, they should return to their natural state."

"The sigil." Chris paused on the though, almost looking hopeful but not quite daring to, "It won't be easy. I know it's somewhere in the castle but I've never actually seen it. There'll probably be demons guarding it too, a _lot_ of demons."

Bianca raised a finger, "Wait, are we talking about a big triquetra in the floor. Glowing. Spells all around? Cause I know where that is."

"You saw it?" Chris asked, amazed, "When?"

Bianca shrugged, "It's where Wyatt and I appeared when all this switched over."

If Chris had sounded amazed before, the next words were closer to awestricken, "Wyatt? Wyatt was with you? You mean he's good?" He wasn't the only one with that reaction, even Freja's jaw had fallen open a bit. Bianca looked back at them like they were all crazy, and maybe they were, somewhat. None of them had even considered the thought that Wyatt wasn't evil.

"Yeah, I was with Wyatt when this all changed over and when the demons showed up and started saluting we played along. I had to run when they figured me out, but he stayed up there to cover for me."

Leo felt the world fall off his shoulders at that moment, the fear he hadn't been aware of dissipating with the realization. He'd seen an illusion of Wyatt evil before and that had been bad enough. Somewhere in the back of his mind he had been dreading the idea of confronting his own son, and to hear that not only was he not evil, but likely going to help... it was the best news so far. He traded a look with Chris and understood in that moment that it had been a fear they'd both held.

"That is..." Freja cultured tones halting, "_unimaginably_ fortunate."

Chris nodded his agreement, "We have to get to him..."

"Most of the demons will be occupied with my army," Freja noted confidently, "We will cut you a path."

"Then that's it then," Bianca said, "We all go in, destroy the sigil, and this whole thing should go back to normal, right?"

Something drew Leo's attention up to the sky, the odd color of it, the shifting of a cloud over the sun, he wasn't sure, but he realized something. "I won't be going with you."

"Why?" Chris snapped over to look at him, not liking whatever it meant. Leo clapped a comforting hand on his shoulder to tamp down on any panic.

"Don't worry, I just have to do something first." He smiled, "If you guys separate the Underworld from this one, there will still be one plane that's not how it should be. I need to go up and reopen the Overworld. I shouldn't have been shut in the first place and I have a feeling we're going to need to push this as far as we can if we want to change it back."

Chris narrowed his eyes but remained deathly quiet and suddenly still, eyes flickering back and forth in thought, "Dad... there are other Elders up there and I don't know if they're just going to let you do that."

Leo tightened his grip on Chris's shoulder, "Then I'll _make _them let me."

For a moment, Leo was pretty sure Chris was going to try to keep him from doing it, his silence dragged so long. It devolved into a staring match between them, and, as stubborn as Chris was, Leo still had all the inherent persuasive abilities that being a father allowed.

"Fine." Chris sighed, "Just..." The word dragged, the half whitelighter not knowing how to end it.

Leo did it for him. "I know."

"Then," Bianca said seriously, knowing the depth of the situation, "We have a plan?"

Chris wound his hand into hers, "We have a plan."

**AN **

School is one big bag of crazy. Hope all of you are having a good season. It took me a bit longer to do this chapter as I was pretty much only able to work on it when waiting for renders to finish. Hopefully it doesn't sound as chopping as that. I do admit the wait wasn't all from school. I went and got Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood which came out, incidentally, on November 16th. I considered it an omen, and had to play it. Oodles of fun, as was to be expected. It even wrung a one shot outta me. So if anyone here has played the game, feel free to go take a look at that fic.

Also, I did a few practice paintings a while back of Bianca and my interpretation of Mel. If you'd like to see those, they are here: shinoutime (dot) livejournal (dot) com (slash) 4578 (dot) html (Hope that keeps from eating it.)

Anyway! We're in the home stretch for this fic. Hopefully that means I'll be able to write it faster. See you all next time!

Oh, also? I was _sure _Freja was spelled like... Freja. Now I saw it spelled with a y (Freyja). Is that just someone being nuts or have I been spelling it wrong all this time?


	15. The One Ring

**Disclaimer: Blah blah. Not mine!**

**Chapter Fifteen: The One Ring**

**6:00**

Wyatt stayed crouched in the darkness, the bend in the flight of stairs affording him enough room to see down into the chamber below. The urge to hide was instinctual, even though he knew he could easily just waltz into any room he liked and command attention. No, it was something about this room that made him want to avoid it. He could feel the black magic crawl across his skin from the moment he descended the first step.

It was... a holding room of some magical sort. He could only just barely see the shapes slumped against the walls, penned in by black sparking crystals. There were guards too, three of them gleefully chattering at the table in the middle of the room, sharpening intimidating looking instruments as they did.

Wyatt almost scoffed. It was a dungeon, a cliched, classic, string em up dungeon. He really didn't know why he was surprised, apparently evil!him operated his legions only on what he could pick up from movies, barely a cent of originality to be seen. Yet another fantastic reason to wipe this place off the map.

Sucking in a deep breath and drawing himself up taller, Wyatt stalked down into the dungeons. The demons on guard stood up in a flash, fumbling to salute, a chorus of scraping chairs punctuating the movement.

"Get out." Wyatt barely finished the words before the demons had shimmered away. Apparently word of his "bad mood" had spread through the ranks, as the longer he tried his evil overlord impression, the less he really had to try. He almost grinned at himself. If this went on any longer he was going to do evil legion races and see how long it took for each room of demons to tuck their tails and flee from the sight of him.

The subtle sound of skin brushing on stone snapped Wyatt's attention back to the forms along the wall, and he jumped back into motion, smiling apologetically. He stepped closer to the nearest form, a human teenager, from the look of the person's frame.

"Don't worry, we'll get you guys out of here as soo-" Wyatt halted as the boy, he recognized now, shrunk into himself and back against the wall, burying his head into the crook of his arm.

Wyatt's jaw hung uselessly for a moment, his brain catching as it shifted gears. He slowed his movements significantly, kneeling down so he was near eye level as he could be.

"Hey, no, I'm not who you think..."

Another form down the wall looked up cautiously at that, face seeming incredulous, but that could have also been the poor lighting.

"Really!" Wyatt pleaded, turning to this new person, "I'm here to help you guys out!"

"...really." The figure snorted a laugh after the word and leaned forward into a faint beam of light, "cause you still look evil to me."

Wyatt's eyebrows climbed up his forehead as he finally recognized the girl's face through the grime. "AJ?" He breathed it out, not really believing it. The scared look on the girls face melted into something Wyatt was more used to seeing: teenage attitude.

"_Yeah._" The word held so much sarcasm that Wyatt had no doubt in his mind about her identity. Only that little brat could be that disrespectful. AJ was a 16 year old witch Piper hired every so often to clean dishes at the restaurant, mostly because whenever she was there, Henry Jr. would actually show up for work due to his debilitating crush on her. A crush AJ seemed stoutly unaware of. She was a good kid, if mouthy... and here she was in a dungeon.

Wyatt started the beginnings of the motion to telekinetically move the crystals out of place when AJ popped her hands up.

"Wait! No! What the heck are you doing?" She hissed, looking utterly scandalized, "Don't you know? These things'll suck the magic right out of you if you do that!"

Wyatt looked down at the things with new respect and sighed, "Okay, that's a problem then. How do I get rid of them?"

AJ stared, disbelieving, "You really aren't him, are you? Lord Wyatt wouldn't be as dumb as you are."

Wyatt sent back a dry look and swirled his hand to make her continue in the explanation before he conveniently forgot that she had any endearing qualities.

"The mortal way. Use a stick." She pointed at a poker across the room and he didn't waste any time retrieving it, dragging the thing in a line and knocking all the cages out of sync as he went. All the captives were witches as far as he could tell, young ones at that, most of them he recognized from the newer classes at Magic School. The task gave him enough time to wonder what the heck he was hoping to accomplish. He just knew he needed to raise some hell, and that he couldn't just leave them down here, but the plan after that... well, he was at a loss.

The witches all congregated in the middle of the room around him, curious and cautiously hopeful. They all still jumped and shied away from him, still scared of him simply because of how he looked. The only person who mostly temped down on the reflex to flinch was AJ, though she still did if he moved too quick. He settled into a spot next to her, careful to seem as nonthreatening as possible, plastering his patented disarming grin onto his face.

"So what kind of spell are you using to look like his lordship? That's got to be some heavy magic! You a shape shifter?" AJ rattled as soon as he got close enough and stopped only when Wyatt held up a halting finger.

"First," Wyatt reached out and pinched her lightly on the arm.

"Ow! What the hell?" AJ reeled back.

"That's for calling me dumb. Respect your elders," Wyatt explained smugly, "Secondly... who knows the way out of here?"

**6:00**

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The demon looked over from his assigned guard post, shoulders hitched, eyes darting to locate the sound. He was obviously uptight, probably due to the fact that the halls felt desolate now, after the majority of the soldiers rushed out to put down some large scale rebellion in the lower part of the city. He wasn't used to the place being so empty. It was... creepy. He told himself not to worry, he wasn't guarding anything important, just a glorified broom closet. No reason for anyone to come after him.

Tap. tap. tap.

He twisted to look down the hallway. It was closer this time! He wasn't imagining it! Ever so slowly, he crept down the hallway, palms dripping with an acidic solution that could burn a hole through his victim's trachea.

Tap. Tap...

The demon launched himself around the bend in the hallway, stopping short just as the person in front of him tapped the athame in his hand against the wall for the final time.

"Hi." Chris Halliwell smiled dimly down at him and crossed his arms. The demon didn't wait to give him an opportunity, he launched forward, hand outstretched, only to feel the odd sensation of having an athame buried in his back.

"Yeeaah," Chris winced in near sympathy, "I'm not the one you need to worry about."

Bianca let the demon drop, carefully avoiding his hands as he went down trying to claw at her. As soon as he hit the floor Bianca firmly planted the heel of her boot on his neck. "This the right spot?" She looked back up at Chris for a second, careful to keep her balance as the demon thrashed.

"Should work." He stepped up a little bit closer, staring at the floor.

The demon twisted its face around enough to gurgle out some words, "Should work for wha-" That was right about the time he was abruptly vanquished, collapsing into a puddle of green acidic goo which didn't waste any time burning a demon shaped hole in the floor. Chris reached out quickly, tugging Bianca back towards him to keep her from falling straight through.

"Well!" Bianca leaned forward to look down the hole, arm still looped in Chris's to keep her balance, "So far so good."

"Yeah, should take us right down to the lowest level." Chris sighed in relief, "It's a straight shot from there."

Bianca turned her looks sideways at him, eyebrow slightly raised as the thoughts ran back through her head and she had to once again figure out if she even wanted to bring it up. They had a little time to wait before the majority of the castle cleared out to chase after the Valkyries, she knew, and if she didn't bring it up now, she might never get an answer.

"You didn't just think this plan up did you?" She hedged cautiously, Chris caught on to the tone immediately, expression shifting to something a little more guarded.

"No... it was escape plan F." He answered after a moment, shrugging at the intense look he received for that answer, "In my earlier years I got caught. It was a dumb mistake and I paid for it, so I had plenty of time to think of plans."

It was most of the truth, Bianca recognized, meant to give the questioning party a sense of achievement so maybe they'll let up and stop asking. She recognized the strategy, she used it all the time. The fact that he even _tried_ spoke volumes for his desperation to get rid of the topic. He hadn't outright tried to lie to her in a long long time.

She stared at him flatly, letting him know he was caught, "Fine. You can keep that one but you have to tell me something else." She crossed her arms, "That necklace you chased that basket case away with, the one you made sure you didn't mention to your dad. Don't give me that look, did you think I'd temporarily gone blind?" Bianca smiled proudly, knowing she'd won regardless, mostly because Chris was giving her the most panicked look she'd ever seen from him.

"Bianca..." He nearly pleaded.

"Chris." She returned solidly, voice equal parts affection and warning. He just stared back at her, visibly trying to think his way out of the situation and coming up with nothing.

"You're not going to like it." He started, hoping she'd call the whole thing off, when the miracle of her backing out didn't occur, he dropped his hands noisily to his sides. "I can use it to take away his powers."

"Funny enough, I'm not hating this option."

"Just-" He held up a hand, "give it a sec. When I say take, I mean it. The powers get transferred to me."

Bianca halted, mouth snapping shut, trying to work through the connotations, "...and what happens then..."

"Crazy guy wasn't crazy before he got this power. There's something about it that just messes with you. It could do nothing or it could... do a lot. The way my luck is going today I don't really feel like playing those odds." Chris shrugged halfheartedly, trying to read Bianca's reaction. She tensed, looking of to the side for a second to let out a breath before she turned back to him.

"Okay, you're right. I don't like this." She frowned, not even trying to hide the worry, "Can't someone else-"

"Sorry..." Chris shook his head slowly, running a hand down her arm, feeling her unconsciously lean into the touch, "If this works out, I won't have to use it at all. We'll leave it to the Elders to clean up their own mess for once."

Bianca wordlessly wrapped her own arm around his and leaned into his side and Chris welcomed it, pulling her closer even as a dark thought solidified in the back of his mind. It rose from the same practical part of his brain that had driven him to grab the necklace off the table in the first place. What if he did have to do this? What if it drove him as completely insane as it had the Pale Man? What was the good of getting rid of one threat if you turned into the other, he couldn't just leave it like that.

"Bianca," He started slowly, "If something happens and I do have to do this, could you do something for me?"

"What?" She looked up at him, suspicious.

"Take away my powers."

Bianca pulled back harshly, "What? No. I can't just pull out one power, they all go or none. I don't even know if I could pull a power like that anyway! It might just take all the magic out of you period."

"Better than me going homicidal, isn't it?" Chris shot back defiantly.

"You wouldn't have any magic." She returned.

"So what!" Chris tossed up his arms, "I wouldn't be able to go on hunts anymore. Big deal. I could still help with the passive stuff if they needed it. Wyatt has enough powers for the rest of us and I have six cousins who we barely keep from going off on demon hunts as is, no one would miss me. Besides, what's so horrible about actually having a normal life, huh? I could actually go to a college without having to worry about a demon dropping in the middle of class. You and I could go and get married like I wanted to without starting some stupid blood feud. I don't see any downsides, do you?"

Chris finally managed to stop himself from talking, only registering the words a few minutes after they came out. The two of them remained in silence for the time it took him to rework what he'd said again. Looking them over, none of them rang untrue.

"You want to get married?" She repeated, almost unbelieving.

"Not exactly how I wanted that to come out but... yeah, of course," He smiled lightly, reaching out to take her hand to look at the ring there, the light catching off it as she twisted her fingers around his, "In this time line, we were engaged. We promised each other that we'd get married after we'd fixed everything and I came back to you. After you died," Chris swallowed uncomfortably at the word, "I had your mother give it to you to say the promise still stood... if you ever wanted to."

Bianca looked at the ring in amazement, remembering when her mom first gave it to her as a kid. Lynn hadn't given much of an explanation other than, "It belongs to you." She'd kept it ever since, becoming absolutely inconsolable if she thought she'd lost it for even a minute.

Wordlessly, she took the ring off and held it out to him, face unreadable for just long enough to make him nervous, "I believe tradition says you're supposed to put it on my other hand." She broke out into a huge smile. Chris gave her a chance to take in a breath before he pulled her in for a kiss, managing to slip the ring on the correct finger without looking.

"There is a condition," Bianca said after she took in a giddy breath.

"That is?" Chris asked distractedly.

"When we get back to our correct time and you don't need that necklace anymore, you get rid of it." She pulled back to see his reaction, gaze intense.

Chris laughed, "Believe me, I will be more than glad to toss that thing into the fires of Mount Doom."

Bianca kissed him again, "Nerd."

"Love you too."

**6:00**

With things being so immensely different on the ground, it was amazingly jarring when Leo arrived in the whiteness of the Overworld to find absolutely nothing had changed. Still the same blinding incandescent white purity, the tall pillars that reached up into a ceiling so high you couldn't even see it. There was one difference though... it was empty. The usually packed rooms were bare, not even the whisper of a whitelighter or Elder present.

"Hello?" Leo called hesitantly, perturbed as his own voice echoed back to him. He brushed it off, making a line for the large carved double doors at the end of the main hall. While he'd never actually closed off a realm, he knew how to do it in theory, and the ritual for opening it back up wasn't much different. He didn't need any other Elder's help with this so it was probably better that no one was there.

Leo curled a hand around the handle just as the echoes of footsteps sounded behind him.

"Leo?" The voice made him halt, the door only open a few inches, "Where have you been?"

Ever so slowly, Leo turned, more tense than he could ever remember being in his life. It couldn't be. Why would he... Leo's eyes focused on the single robed figure in the middle of the empty hall, looking up at him with an unguarded, benevolent expression.

Gideon stared at him curiously, "Leo, are you alright?"

* * *

AN: Holy crap on a stick guys. I hadn't meant to let this sit for this long, but I had to concentrate on my art, I still do have to actually, but I'm in a (hopefully) small slump that's allowed me some time to work on this. We're really closet to the end here of this fic. Probably two or three more chapters and an epilogue. Apologies for the shortness of this chapter but it was a little difficult to get back into the swing of things. I'd love for some reviews to kick my butt into gear (hint hint) :).

If anyone would like to take a looksie at my art you can find me either through deviantart at Vylla (dot) deviantart (dot) com or I also have an sketch blog up at Risahulett (dot) blogspot (dot) com where I post something every day (mostly _).

Cheers guys, and thanks for sticking around.


	16. A Greater Good

**Disclaimer: Blah blah. Not mine!**

**Chapter Sixteen: A Greater Good**

**6:05**

Twenty three years exactly since the last time Leo saw Gideon. Twenty three years for any latent grief or anger to seep out of him as he mellowed further with old age. He should be able to remember that time with some sense of removal. He expect that much from himself at least. However, here, staring at the man, after witnessing everything that he had caused... it was almost too much.

Gideon took a slow step forward, sensing the tension in the air, head tilted in that concerned way he always used to, "Leo..."

"_Stop._" Leo bit out the word, hand wrapped so tightly around the door handle he could barely feel his fingers anymore. He doubted his expression was any less tense, and probably more than a little alarming, if Gideon's sudden change in posture said anything. Leo let him stand there in confusion as he collected himself, fist clenched.

"Leo if-"

"Don't. Talk." Leo cut him off again, the white room dimming with his rage, "Don't move. Don't talk. Don't _breathe_."

Gideon was no fool, he paused, shifting his feet cautiously to compensate for the occasional tremor the room let out. That was the thing about the Underworld and Overworld, they didn't obey the laws of physics as the normal world did. They were pure expressions of purpose. They were meant to reflect its occupants as they changed. If there were fewer members, rooms or caves just simply faded off into nothing.

Or they were supposed to.

When they had closed the Overworld to keep Wyatt from melding it together with the other two planes, it had frozen it in time at that exact moment, right after the majority of the Elders had died, before the plane could change and shrink their influence and power. With only the two of them to maintain it, the realm had become... unstable at best. The slightest heightened emotion could do irreparable damage.

It hadn't been a problem before, but now... when Gideon looked at Leo, he had a feeling that would change.

"You need to calm yourself, Leo, remember our pact? This will gain us nothing!" Gideon stepped up the first stair, hand held out imploringly. The room trembled again, as Leo's glare strengthened. Gideon looked back down the hall, watching the distant end skew and slant oddly, the effects of Leo's temper already showing in the architecture.

"Our _pact_?" Leo said coldly, disbelieving.

Gideon stared, suspicious, "... It was your idea, was it not? To maintain the stability. To keep the planes from collapsing together." He searched for some sign of recognition and found nothing, "Emotions, Leo! The slightest provocation could bring this place down around us, we did what was necessary."

Leo's grip slackened slightly around the door's handle as he realized what Gideon meant. The room stopped shaking as he did, the end of the hall stopping at a 45 degree angle, making it look like some demented Escher painting.

"We cut off our emotions..." Leo said numbly, sinking in the connotations. Sitting up here for years, heartless to nothing but the hope that they could prevent change in their own little empty world. He'd intentionally cut of the part of him that would care about his sons, in favor of... this?

"Yes," Gideon smiled calmly, looking relieved that Leo had regained his senses, "For the greater good. Now, Leo, are you sure you're alright? I'm not sure how they summoned you out of here, but you look... changed."

Leo didn't move, staring down at the only man he had truly despised in his entire existence. He hated this man more than any demon in the world, it was their nature after all, they were evil. Gideon... he didn't just betray every bit of trust any of the other Elders had put in him, he had betrayed everything that was good. He _hated_ this man.

Yet, looking at him, the only thing he could think of, was the fact that he, Leo, even an alternate Leo, had knowingly trapped himself in a plane for all eternity with this very man. He had been catching glimpses of this old self from his time here and before. The small hints he could get out of Chris. Out of some morbid curiosity, he wanted to know more, just to try to piece the jagged picture of himself back together into something recognizable.

"Sorry, old..." Leo swallowed around the word, "friend... I think they did something while I was down there, I can't remember, but this seems familiar. I don't understand. Could you talk me through it?" He wrung out every single drop of acting he had, almost reluctantly.

Gideon quirked an eyebrow slightly, concerned, but thankfully didn't question. "You did a noble thing all those years ago, when you volunteered first. You knew that in order for us to make knowledgeable and logical decisions, we couldn't be clouded. We were the last! We had to hold the world together!" He waved his hands emphatically, obviously still proud. "Besides, walling away your emotions wasn't such a chore after you gave up that foolish attempt at being a father. You were as lucky to be as detached as you were, or you likely would have been dragged down beyond repair by those two."

The two Elders were nearly deafened by the sound of marble snapping, the walls and pillars creaking and groaning as the back portion of the hall literally broke away. Gideon stumbled in the quake, landing on the stairs crookedly, trying to peer around to see the damage through the cloud of dust. As it filtered away, he gaped at the damage.

Where the end of the grand hall had been, there was only the jagged edges of the walls and floor and then a steep drop off into... nothing. A stretching black void was beyond it, empty and hopeless. Gideon whipped back around, looking back to the cause of the disturbance.

"Leo," Gideon stood up and stumbled over to the man, meeting only a glare and clenched fists. "They did something to you, didn't they? You must come to your senses, remember your purpose! We have to survive through this time to continue on to another. Those two have done nothing but hinder the greater good, don't waver because of their word."

Leo wordlessly took a step forward, making Gideon shy back an equal step. "You think my boys, my _sons_, don't do anything for good? How can you dare say that when you are sitting up here, hiding, while the world is ending?"

Leo took another step forward, making Gideon's posture a little more frantic, but he managed not to lose any more ground, "It's a spell, Leo, you can fight this! You know Wyatt is evil, take a look at the world! And Christopher has been nothing by a passive participant in this all. He had the opportunity to end this early and has had several since then and he _failed_."

"You're seriously trying to blame Chris because he didn't kill his _brother_?" The walls cracked again.

"No!" Anger bubbled around Gideon's choke hold on his temper, some of the cracks in the walls belonging to him now, "I blame him for not killing a _great evil_. It is his duty as a witch. He forced us into this corner with his decisions, leaving us only with the option to retain this plane and hope the next generation is not as foolish as this one!"

Gideon barely saw Leo lunge for him, but he was well aware of it once he hit the stairs, Leo's knee in his stomach and his back arced into the jagged steps. He flexed his fingers on reflex but stopped himself from using magic, knowing that the room was so unstable now that it would surely collapse if any more magic was added into the mix.

Leo loomed above him, a menacing picture cut against the jagged horizon of the hallway and the black oblivion behind it. What surprised Gideon was his expression. He was no longer angry, but instead he was showing a look of contentment... somehow that was scarier.

"I'm going to make this clear, Gideon. I do not blame Chris or Wyatt for any of this." Leo said calmly, "I blame _myself_. I blame myself for not being there for my kids, for thinking that anything was more important than them. I blame myself for not seeing, or believing, or for any self deception to make me think that something wasn't wrong here. I blame myself for not being down these past years, shoulder to shoulder with my family, trying to find any solution better than run and _hide_."

Leo stopped only for a moment, to see if any of this had sunk in, "But what I blame myself most for? It's that I didn't see you for who you really were back at the start. A bitter, hurt, old man who has twisted the idea of good so far in his mind only to distract himself from his many failures. Just because you can't stop your own son from going evil you try to kill someone else's."

Gideon went rigid, eyes flying open in realization. "How..."

"Did you know Chris has been helping innocents for years? Innocents who _hate_ him for what he is and he does it anyway?" Leo dug the words in further, "Did you know he hasn't been 'passive' this whole time but he's actually been fighting for a way to fix this without any help other than who he can turn from Wyatt's army? Did you know he found a way to go to the past, suffered through suspicion and outright hate from his own family, fought demon after demon, and almost made himself not _exist_ trying to keep Wyatt from turning evil?"

"That's impossible!" Gideon broke in, "that boy was evil from the start!"

Leo smiled with pride, "and he succeeded."

Gideon couldn't find any words.

"He helped us stop you from kidnapping his brother..." Leo's expression went dark, "and you killed him for it. Wyatt has grown up without a hint of evil in him. I'm from that timeline, Gideon, a world where my boys have dedicated their lives to helping people."

"Impossible..." Gideon breathed. Leo happily ignored him.

"That world? It exists in _spite_ of us. We owe the greater good to my boys, a handful of Valkyrie, and a Phoenix Assassin of all things. Even the Wyatt of this time knew better than to kill his own _brother_." Leo laughed humorlessly, "They are all far better people than you could _ever_ be."

With that, Leo stood back up, leaving Gideon sprawled on the stairs, stunned.

"Now, you're either going to help me unlock this place or you can take the walk down the hallway and see how far of a drop it is at the end." Leo shrugged, "Your choice."

**6:30**

"Oh! Cra-!" AJ skittered backwards when she rounded the next corner, arms pinwheeling for a split second until she clamped them over her mouth. Wyatt took the hint immediately, flagging the rest of the malnourished stragglers back before he insinuated himself in front of AJ, Excalibur drawn. He slid quietly down the wall next to her, angling the sword up so he could see around the corner in the reflection. Sure enough, down the hallway was what had to be a whole troop of demons lining the hall, two on each side, thirteen rows deep, all mid level demons at least, as far as he could tell.

Wyatt frowned at it, before quietly dropping the sword to a more ready position. 26 Demons at once? Yeah he could do that, if he had Chris with him and they somehow managed to transport the entire attic's worth of backup vanquishing potions. Oh, and if he didn't have to worry about using his stash of evil overlord powers which he didn't really know how to use and didn't want to in the first place. Theoretically the hallway should give him an advantage, but the damn thing was so wide it was practically a room, plus the distance between the guards and them was practically the length of a house so surprise attacks were out too.

Thankfully, because of that distance, the guards seemed unaware of them at least. Wyatt sunk farther, looking over at AJ who had huddled next to him, knees to her chest, with the funniest look on her face. It wasn't quite fear, nor confusion, it was an unholy mix of the two.

"Yeah, so that seems like a bad hallway to go down. Is there another way out of here?" He spoke lowly, keeping an optimistic look on his face so the emaciated tween witches following him wouldn't worry. He smiled quickly at them, which seemed to make them look even more uneasy, before he looked back over at AJ for an answer. She, however, had different ideas.

"Is that the _real_ Excalibur?" She hissed, pointing at the sword in his hands.

Wyatt opened his mouth to say yes like usual before he realized that, maybe, that was a very bad idea. Only one person was allowed to carry Excalibur: him, and if he was trying to pretend to be someone else, that wouldn't gel. He really didn't want to break what little trust he had with these kids and he most definitely didn't want to go back to being fake evil again, it just felt too... easy.

So he tried to lie. Unfortunately all that came out was, "Uh... so why's this hallway so important?"

AJ's face twisted to an even more ridiculous proportion before she quietly sighed, "It's a choke point. All the dungeons, cells, and the guest room have only one way out. Here."

Wyatt nodded in understanding until that last one, "Guest room? Seriously?"

The hint of tired, bitten humor slipped right away at that, "It's his idea of a joke, I think," AJ shifted uncomfortably, "It's where Lord Wyatt puts his brother any time he catches him. He says he wants to be as accommodating as he can while still being... convincing. Sometimes I can hear the screams in my cell..."

Wyatt felt abruptly sick.

"That hallway," AJ pressed on, "It goes straight up into the sigil room. Makes it easier to bring us up there, I guess."

Despite his best judgment and at risk of having nothing but nightmares ever again, Wyatt sent her a questioning look. The only upside of this was that the kids were starting to seem amused at his lack of information and a few were full on giggling at him.

AJ just lifted up her arm showing what looked like an old scar, "Virgin Witch Blood. It's a component for finishing the sigil spell." She shrugged as if it wasn't a big deal, "Drained us nearly dry last time but there's more of us now so it shouldn't be as bad."

"-Holyshit...and yeah that's enough information for today." Wyatt lurched a little in his spot, held up a hand, and pointed back down the hallway to the previous bend they'd just come around. "Go and hide, I have to go kill something."

"Wait, you're going try to fight, you can't-"

Wyatt forcefully shook his head, half to tell her no and half to just get the images that were still lingering in his head out, "Uh-no. Go hide. I'll be fine. If you see anything demonic heading your way, run. I'll find you after. Be safe and for chrissakes don't let anyone bleed you over any evil alters."

Thankfully the kids didn't feel the need to argue much more, though AJ did give him a look that accurately described her distaste for his choice in strategies. He stayed there, hunched against the wall until they disappeared around the corner, not because of any stealth reasons, he simply didn't know if he would be able to stand up at that moment.

Slowly he pulled his arms close to him, hands still wrapped around the hilt of Excalibur for strength. He stayed that way for a second, just trying to stop the shaking in his limbs. He wasn't scared, he'd never been scared of a fight in his life, but the anger, guilt, and outright disgust at this whole world were enough to set him over that edge.

Wyatt pressed his hands against his brow, the sword's cool pommel pressed against his forehead, and tried to find his center. "Come on Wyatt." He urged himself, "This isn't you. This will never be you." Slowly his hands stopped shaking as he pulled on all the swordsmanship and wisdom being Excalibur's bearer had afforded him. "Raise some hell."

The disgust fueled the first two kills, the two demons going down without much of a fight, too distracted with his appearance to think of doing anything else but stare. The next string of kills was driven by the guilt, that he should have found some way to stop his alternate self somehow, that it shouldn't have been possible for him to be evil in the first place. By the fourth kill the demons had started fighting back after one cried imposter on him. They were wrong and right at the same time. By the sixth kill, he found some upper level demons who didn't fall quite as easy, as a matter of fact, this one in particular seemed entirely unaffected by the loss of his arm... that's when he tapped into the anger.

Wyatt rushed the demon, ramming Excalibur through his ribcage and straight through into the wall behind him, pinning him there uselessly. The rest of the demons took the opportunity and swarmed him, pulling him away from the sword and down the hall. At first he tried only using telekinesis, that, at least was a neutral power, he thought, but they just kept coming, and anger was feeding him in dangerous ways, the darker powers teasing the edges of his senses like flames.

"Hey!"

Wyatt whipped around at the sound even in the haze of battle and recognized AJ's form at the end of the hallway, waving her hands to catch the attention of a few of the demons intent on dog piling him. Wyatt turned on a heel to head them off but another couple managed to grab his arms.

"Run, you idiot!" He called, elbowing one of the demons and feeling the satisfying snap of bone.

AJ held her ground for a second, shifting from foot to foot nervously, waiting for the demon to come within a few paces of her. Then she dropped, hands hitting the stone floors with a resounding smack. The floor liquified in a second, and the demon sank into it to his shoulders only for the floor to solidify again around him as soon as the witch removed her hands and jumped back to her feet.

Wyatt had time enough to see AJ punt the demon's head like a football before he caught an energy ball to the chest and skidded halfway down the hallway. The next moments were nothing but a blur of teeth, claws, and magic, the dark flames taunting him with their power. He could clear this room in a second if he wanted to. Just a flick of the wrist and anything organic would be cinders. It would be _so easy..._

Another demon tried to jab a severed tusk (that used to belong to one of his demonic comrades, how thoughtful) straight into his heart but Wyatt caught the arm in time, spinning around and throwing the beast into the wall with a resounding thud. He continued the spin and found himself staring down a bloody athame. He didn't know what battle instincts told him to pause his usual counterstrike for half a second, but he was glad for it.

It was that half second that allowed him to trace the arm back to its owner, and found himself staring at a pair of familiar green eyes. Chris. It took a second longer to notice that he looked absolutely _terrified_.

"Chris?" He managed to get out in the din of the battle, not that he was sure his brother really heard him. As a matter of fact, his eyes had gone unfocused, his grip slackening on his athame until it dropped, and Chris started falling with it. Wyatt managed to grab him before he hit the ground and drag him to the wall for support in time to blast another demon away with a wave of telekinesis even as another one took his place, trying to drag him farther away from his brother.

To his credit, Chris was managing to keep upright, leaning heavily on the wall, both hands clutched in his bangs like he had one mother of a headache. Another demon tried to pull Wyatt away again and, in his distraction and anger, he shoved a black ball of flame into the demon's face. The demon soon dropped into a pile of ash, skin peeling away like burnt paper.

Wyatt lurched back, as if he could get space between him and that power. He felt the sensation of it singing in his veins, he couldn't let it happen again. He didn't notice the demon behind him until the thing screamed in pain, clutching at the place were Wyatt assumed some vital organ or another had been crushed with telekinesis.

"You're welcome." Chris remarked dryly behind him, wincing slightly and still slightly sagging against the wall.

"You gonna be alright?" Wyatt asked cautiously, scanning the ring of eight remaining demons who were now noticeably more cautious about taking a run at them. They were certainly puting up a good show, snapping and biting at the edges of Wyatt's reach.

Chris pushed himself up from the wall and rolled his shoulders tensely, ducking for a moment to retrieve the athame he'd dropped and flipping it over in his grip. "Yeah," He said tired, "Just as long as I don't look at you, I'll be fine."

"What? Why?" Wyatt frowned but didn't look back over his shoulder in fear that the demons would take advantage of the distraction. To his relief he heard Chris chuckle lightly.

"Don't ask questions you don't want the answer to." Chris stepped in formation so his back was against Wyatt's, one hand holding an athame the other poised for telekinesis. The demons started looking increasingly nervous. "I've got your back, Wy."

Wyatt nodded even though Chris wouldn't be able to see it, the smirk was really more for intimidation purposes anyway, "Right back at ya."

The disadvantage of not looking at each other wasn't really a disadvantage at all, the demons found out. The brothers knew each other so well that they could fight together blindfolded. Even with the fact that Wyatt had never necessarily seen Chris fighting with an athame before, and with Wyatt only willing to use Telekinesis, it still fit into the program seamlessly.

First one to catch the demon disables him, a cut up the leg, couple broken bones, the second cleans up the mess, if the demon is of a high enough level where that doesn't necessarily do the whole job, you down them to the point where they can't do any harm and deal with them last. It's a whirlwind of confusion for any opponent, let alone thug guards like these.

They were nigh unbeatable.

By the time that Chris buried his athame up underneath the jaw of a demon who looked quite unfortunately like a purple Jay Leno and Wyatt was reducing another into a pile of goo, the last remaining demon decided he didn't want to play anymore and ran.

...right into Bianca.

"Ooh. Looks like you boys missed one." She smiled sweetly as the demon practically ran onto her athame and crumbled into a pile of sulfur. The gaggle of tweens behind her all gaped in awe at the scene, staring at the various piles of goo and dust on the floor like it was Christmas.

"Oh good, just what I need," Wyatt sighed, "Snarky Phoenix."

"Watch it Wyatt." Chris singsonged the words tiredly, once again digging the heels of his hands into his eyes like he was trying to get rid of a headache. Bianca smiled wryly before pointedly stepping over to Chris, running a light soothing hand over his forehead. Then the light clicked on in his head, in all the things with the evil world he'd forgotten they were dating, or at least that's what he'd come to assume. Assuming it and seeing it however, two _entirely_ different things.

"Yeah, that's gonna be weird for a while..." Wyatt commented, feeling oddly like he was invading their privacy. Bianca smirked lightly at him before turning back to Chris, speaking to him in low tones Wyatt couldn't hear. He took the opportunity to turn back to the kids, scanning the heads for AJ, he found her lurking in the back of the pack. At first he was just happy to see that she hadn't gotten herself killed with her little distractionary tactics, but the look on her face wasn't anything particularly reassuring.

"Hey you," He called out jokingly to AJ, "next time I say run and scream from the demons like a little girl, you realize you should actually do that, right?"

AJ's frown didn't change, eyes seeming accusatory. She stepped forward in the crowd, hesitantly coming closer to him. Every single step seemed to take a drop of happiness from her, the desperation on her face taking over.

"AJ, you alright?" He asked cautiously.

"You're him, aren't you?" Then she just sunk, tears streaming down her face, hitting the floor heavily with her knees. "What sort of game is this?" She looked up at him briefly before flinching back down. "I can't do this anymore, I just can't. Just kill me already, I can't play these games." Her shoulders seemed to cave in around her and she fell forward, pressing her forehead to the ground and sobbing.

Wyatt was frozen, staring uselessly. The best he could work up was a halfhearted shake of the head. The kids behind her had frozen, eyes looking up at him like tiny deer chained to the train tracks, "I'm not..."

"Yes you are," AJ's voice broke, her fists clenched next to her temple, "You have Excalibur, you can't shapeshift that! I saw you use the black flame!" She sniffled wetly, "Don't give me hope and then take it away. I can't... I just can't...Don't put me back in that cell."

Wyatt shook his head again, staggering back a step. "I... why would anyone _do _that?"

Chris stepped up next to him, looking anywhere but at him, Wyatt could still see the lines of pain around his eyes slightly so he didn't press it. From the tilt of his head Wyatt knew he was talking to him. Chris gave him a tense smile, like the on the doctor gives you right before he tells you the test results, "On off days or special occasions," Chris snorted, "_Lord _Wyatt would pretend to let a block of prisoners go... and then he and a chosen squad would hunt them." Chris shrugged lightly, not mentioning that this was what he'd _actually _used to escape last time. Seeing it first hand... he could understand how AJ felt.

They let you far enough out you could see the sky again then they drag you right back in. It was torture. Chris stepped around him, giving a pat of reassurance on his shoulder as he passed even though he was still pointedly not looking at him. He knelt down in front of AJ and pulled on her arms so she'd look at him.

"AJ. Hey, AJ, just look at me for a second." Reluctantly she obeyed, looking absolutely miserable, "Do you remember me, you remember who I am? I used to come and visit you guys at magic school with my Aunt, remember?"

Weakly, AJ nodded, "You're his brother."

Chris sighed, the bitterness in his tone only halfway joking, "I have a name." AJ didn't seem all that amused by the joke, "Look, you know who I am, right? If he was Lord Wyatt, why in the _hell_ would I be anywhere near him."

AJ considered this for a second before shaking her head vigorously, "No, no, I'm not falling for that. You could have turned finally. I heard you last time! I know what it sounds like when someone is close to breaking!"

All three of the adults reacted visibly to that statement. Wyatt staggered back again like he was punched, Bianca's crossed arms were suddenly crossed a little too tightly, fingers pressing white circles into her tan skin. Chris, well, he was busy trying to fight off the memory she'd called up, an intensely painful and entirely useless one. For some reason the memories just seemed so hard to push away when Wyatt was close by, just his presence served to reinforce them.

Chris took in a deep breath and let it hiss out, eyes pinched shut until it passed.

"Whatever," He finally mumbled out, inching his eyes back open to scan the crowd, "If you won't believe me... hey, Carter, come here for a second." The smallest boy in the back of the crowd froze instantly, only moving when his compatriots shoved him to the front.

"You're a telepath right?" The boy nodded slowly, "Do you know how to read for intentions yet?"

Again the boy nodded shyly, "Yeah but I gotta hold their hand..."

Chris smiled at him, "Good, I need you to get a read and tell AJ what you find, okay?" Intuitively the boy reached out for Chris's hand only to have him yank it out of his reach before he could. The boy jumped at the sudden motion, skittering back a few steps until Chris coaxed him back forward. "Sorry. No, believe me, you don't want to be in my head right now. Read Wyatt."

The boy's eyes immediately opened to full on saucer size.

"He won't hurt you, and if he does, I promise I will hold him down and you can draw whatever you want on his face. Alright?" Chris shoved the kid over, amused, tossing instructions over his shoulder at Wyatt, "Let the kid in. He's good."

It was the weirdest image Wyatt had ever seen, an oppressively short, dirty, emaciated, and likely orphaned witch child walked up to him on timid steps. He reached up and grabbed onto his fingers... and then it was like the lights came one behind his eyes. They became distant and close all at once, like they could see the universe in that one instant. There was a rush, the odd feeling of wind sweeping through Wyatt's senses, and then the kid let go.

Cheerfully he grinned and sent a little wave back to his friends, "Yeah, he's cool, guys!" Carter moved to leave before spinning on his heel to look back up at him, "Mister, I think you need a girlfriend." Then he hopped off to rejoin the pack.

Bianca was trying very, very hard to not laugh, but the mortified look on the elder Halliwell's face was absolutely priceless. Wyatt shook his head slowly and tossed up his arms, "I give up. Nothing good happens on this day. Chris, I believe you now, your birthday officially sucks. We should just build a bomb shelter and stay in it ever time it rolls around. You win."

For the first time since that morning, Chris managed to look him in the face with a smirk, "I dunno, I'm kind of finding it funny right about now." With that he climbed to his feet, gently taking AJ to stand with him. She sniffled a little, but they were fading.

"I don't understand." She said, looking between the three of them listlessly, "How..."

Chris shrugged hesitantly taking an experimental glance again over at Wyatt to see if the visions were leaving him alone at the moment. "You know anything about time travel?"

Wyatt snapped over to look at his brother in surprise. He'd heard his parents saying things about this when they'd left him to guard the fort way back earlier in the day, he hadn't actually considered... The group mostly shook their heads, except Carver who was nodding like it wasn't a big deal.

"Yeah, thought so," Chris sent a look for help back at Bianca who merely shrugged and nodded to her watch, "I came from this timeline, I went through all the stuff you guys have and everything you've heard. So I wanted to fix this. I went back to the past, and changed it so he never went evil. Understand?"

Chris could feel the stare of disbelief coming from his brother but he refused to look at him again until he'd finished the whole thing, this was hard enough to boil down as it was.

"So everything was going fine, no one's evil, you guys are all actually still at magic school in our version, then a warlock came and cast a spell that turned it back to this timeline and put us in it." Chris pointed illustratively, "Now we're going to fix it... again."

AJ stared at him, running a hand up and down her arm nervously, a little more of her typical dry incredulity creeping in, "Just like that?" Chris shrugged and nodded, "You promise?"

Wyatt broke in then, more sure of this than anything, "Yes."

Chris turned a smile to his brother for a second, before looking back to AJ.

"We promise."

A/N: Oh my holy hell readers. I swear I caught the plague. Good news is this chapter is super long so I hope that makes up for some of the wait. Good and/or bad news is there should only be about one more chapter and an Epilogue after this. Then maybe... seeequalage. If and when I do another story I will be writing four or five chapters ahead of time before I post anything just to make sure I don't change my mind on something big in the beginning and then kick myself for posting it.

Aaanyways, reviews, as always are love. They kept me coming back to this monster of a chapter even after it repeatedly kicked me in the teeth. I apologize for any typos. I usually wait till the next day to check for them because I can spot them better but I didn't want to make you guys wait any longer than I already have. Please, please, please, tell me what you think about some of the things in the chapter today, it might very well have an effect on what I do in the next. I'm kinda teetering on two options so. Yes.

Also everyone go thank the movie Ink for making me all creative again. You can watch it for free on Hulu it is awesomesauce and independent and deserves way much more love. I was listening to the soundtrack the whole time I was writing this.


	17. You Don't Know

**Disclaimer: Blah blah. Not mine!**

**Long chapter. Consider it a two hour long finale.**

**Chapter Seventeen: You Don't Know**

**7:00**

Slowly, carefully, Chris counted out his breathing. Four seconds in, hold, four seconds out, repeat. Listen to nothing but the silence of the empty hallway, look at nothing but the flashes of color on the inside of his eyelids, feel nothing but the floor beneath your feet and the wall at your back. In that spare moment, there was no pressure, no doom and gloom, no ticking clock. He needed that, just for a moment. It was skill of his, to find the one thread of order in all the chaos, one slip of sanity to cling onto. All he needed was a second of silence and everything would snap together.

Or he used to be able to it. He was out of practice. His second time around, demons or no, was considerably more peaceful, or at the very least, involved far less monumental snafus than the first. Now, when he tried to find that moment of peace, things kept sneaking back in. What ifs. What if this doesn't work? What if it _does? _How were they supposed to go on living after the fact, pretending that this didn't effect them? How was he supposed to live with these memories? How was Wyatt going to get over the fact that all it took was one kidnapping as a child to turn him batshit evil?

Chris growled inwardly, halting the thoughts, the growing crease in his brow seeming to intensify his headache. Stubbornly, he kept his eyes shut, curling his fingers against the wall. One, two, three, four. He needed clarity, just a moment...

He didn't have to see Bianca to know she was there, he also didn't have to look to know she had that worried look on her face.

"I'm fine." Chris breathed out, rolling his head back to hit the wall before he bothered opening his eyes. Bianca settled next to him, leaning on her shoulder, posture screaming disbelief.

"Sure you are." She commented lightly, though she didn't press.

"Is Wyatt almost done?"

"He's just making sure all the kids are well hidden," Bianca tossed a look down the hallway, still slightly messy from the earlier fight. Her expression softened a little, "It's good for him, them trusting him... He's worried, you know."

Chris nodded, knowing the question wasn't really a question. _He_ was worried for Wyatt, and he wasn't used to that either. Usually all that would take is a little brotherly heart to heart, a punch on the shoulder, and an order to cowboy up, but frankly Chris didn't trust himself to not lapse into memory land and make the whole situation worse. The last thing Wyatt needed was Chris flashing back to a session with the other Wyatt "convincing" him of some point or another. He honestly didn't know how he'd held those memories back so far either, probably just pure desperation.

"What if he doesn't get over this..." The words escaped him, even after his little exercise.

Bianca tilted her head slightly, taking the question seriously. She knew first hand how Wyatt was feeling, and _she _wasn't the one who turned into the Source. "Honestly?" She whispered, leaning over to rest her cheek on his arm, "I don't know exactly... but he's got you, and your family. Time fixes the rest."

"Time does a lot of things..." Chris mumbled before letting the topic go and looping has arm around her, leaning in for support as much as she was leaning on him. In that moment, he found an instance of silence. The what ifs didn't matter. For everyone, for the entire world, he owed it to them to make sure this time was permanent. Fixing it was all that mattered. End of story.

They stayed like that until Wyatt's footsteps broke the silence of the hallway shortly followed by him rounding the corner. Completely on reflex, Bianca shifted to move away, but Chris simply frowned and looped his arm around her tighter, surprising her. Catching the glint of the ring now on her other hand, she supposed she shouldn't be. The time for instinctive secret keeping was over.

To Wyatt's credit, the only giveaway to his own surprise at the two of them was a slight hitch in his step as he got closer. Well... until he got close enough to talk.

"Please don't tell me you guys are going to be one of those insufferably cute couples now, cause if you are, I reserve the right to use grade school tactics. I.E. the K.I.S.S.I.N.G. song and that simulated barfing motion." Wyatt demonstrated.

Entirely unbothered, Chris just pulled Bianca closer and gave Wyatt a face that clearly said "Bring it on." The Phoenix witch couldn't help but smirk slightly, "You're all class, Wyatt, has anyone told you that?"

Wyatt made a show of looking offended, "Oh yeah, speaking of that. Chris, I don't like to tattle tale on people, but your girlfriend was _mean_ to me earlier."

"You probably deserved it. He deserved it, right?" Chris answered without missing a beat, his own satisfied grin growing.

"Oh yeah." Bianca nodded.

Chris shrugged at his brother like there was nothing he could do, "Case closed."

"Yeah, yeah," Wyatt tossed his hands up, "Moving on. So do we have a plan bigger than 'destroy the sigil' or are we just winging it? How do even destroy that thing anyway, it's like thirty feet across..."

"We've done as much prep work as we could, the Valkyries have got most of the demons out of building. Judging by how many demons were here, there's probably more inside," Chris looked over at the door at the end of the hallway leading into the sigil room. "We've got to hold them back long enough to get at the center of the room. In the middle there's this crystal that's focusing the spell..."

Wyatt nodded, "and Excalibur plus crystal equals goodbye sigil, goodbye evil timeline?"

"Yes," Chris withheld the 'Hopefully' part of that sentence. Wyatt picked up on it anyway but knew not to poke that elephant in the room.

Bianca pulled away from Chris's side gently, conjuring three athames into her hands and wordlessly held one out for Chris. Wyatt followed suit and pulled Excalibur out and ready. It was their silent signal. They'd said everything they needed to say, anything more would be just delay what they had to do.

Quietly, they each took a side of the door, pressed out of the way in case they walked into a hail of fireballs. With a quick nod at his brother, Wyatt eased the door open, leaned in so he could see the room beyond, waiting for the kaboom.

There was none. From the sliver of a view Wyatt had, the room was completely empty.

"Alright..." Wyatt frowned, scanning the gigantic room, "Not what I was expecting."

"Trap?" Bianca asked.

"Probably," Chris sighed sharply, "Bianca, could you..?"

"On it."

Before Wyatt could ask what the plan was, Bianca had shimmered out from between the two of them.

"Aw, that's so cute." Wyatt mock crooned, "The whole knowing each other's battle strategies. Couples who infiltrate evil magic castles together, stick together."

"Shut up, Wyatt," Chris sing-songed, more than used to Wyatt's pre-battle jokes. Chris kept trying to tell him it was a coping mechanism. Wyatt preferred that he was just funny on all occasions. After getting his own look at the empty room, Chris shot him a reassuring look, "Trust me, she'll be there when we need her."

Wyatt sighed despite himself and, for the first time, realized he didn't doubt that she would. "Well then," He smiled, "Let's give them a show." Chris's smirk in return was all he needed before he hauled back and kicked the door open as loudly as possible, compounding the impact with a bit of telekinesis to make the dust rattle off of every surface. The two of them walked out with every ounce of bravado the held in them. If they couldn't see the threat coming, they might as well make them think twice about challenging them.

"Attention all evil minions!" Wyatt yelled into the seemingly endless balconies above them, twirling Excalibur over in his hand. "This apocalypse is now closed. Please find the nearest portal and/or chasm and go straight to Hell. If anyone has a problem with this new direction we're taking, we'll be right here taking suggestions."

Chris sent him a quick eye roll, though the bright grin on Wyatt's face was clearly echoed on Chris's. This was how they usually played things, how they had been playing it since before they'd technically got the green light on demon hunting. Wyatt stirs up the crowd, gets them mad, careless. Chris was the precise one, he'd clean house while they were too busy worrying about Wyatt to watch anything else.

This was the same, Chris used the distraction Wyatt was making and eased over closer to the middle of the sigil. Their main advantage in this was that the demons didn't know exactly what they were after. The longer they could delay that realization, the better.

Chris looked everywhere but where he was headed, half to keep track of the still uncharacteristically empty room, and half as a distraction. It was only that characteristic tense feeling in the air that warned him he wasn't fooling anyone. He quickly turned, finding the person he hoped wouldn't show up standing between him and his goal.

The pale man stood tall, smiling benignly but otherwise, he seemed completely uninterested in playing another round of time freeze tag. Chris flicked a look over at Wyatt, confirming that time wasn't frozen. Wyatt had already flipped tactics, his way to the center of the room wasn't blocked. Chris would be playing distraction today...

"Apparently you're stupid," Chris glared at the pale man, hand already dipped in his pocket, the necklace wound securely around his fingers, "Didn't you get the point last time?"

The man's smile didn't waver, he didn't look scared or even bothered. Nothing like a completely serene bad guy to make you know something was very wrong. Chris had the feeling he didn't want to figure out what. Wyatt was sneaking closer to the white glint in the middle of the floor. They just needed a few more seconds...

"You don't know." The man's smile grew impossibly, showing teeth.

Chris shifted on his feet, just enough to keep attention, "I don't know what?"

"It took me a while to figure it out. I took me so long to remember, so many years, so many memories. I had to dig so far to find the memory, how exactly it worked. Then I realized. You don't know either." the hysteria in the man's voice grew with each word.

Some sharp instinct prodded at Chris, this wasn't a bluff. This was important. Whatever this was, he needed to know it now. He pulled the necklace out, the triquetra glowing brightly. The man's eyes flickered to it, showing a moment of worry before that confident smile was back on his face.

"They'll hate you." The man whispered, "Fear you... break you. Your brother was right. It's an illusion, the balance of good and evil. All that matters is the balance of time."

Chris felt that familiar temper start to build. There was something specific that he was dancing around... "Would you just make sense, for once in your life." He bit out, barely paying attention to how close Wyatt was getting.

"No, thank you," He answered back politely, he glanced back to the necklace again without fear, "To use that, you have to get close enough to me, and I made a new friend while you were away."

Seconds after, the center of the room seemed to explode into flames and the Pale Man disappeared. Chris didn't get to spend a whole lot of time looking for him as he was too busy not getting set on fire. He staggered back to a part of the room that wasn't nearly as charred, and looked around. Wyatt was a little bit away, crouched behind a dimming shield.

"Wy! You alright?"

"Slightly toasted, but yeah. What the hell was that?" The twice blessed staggered back to his feet and rolled his shoulders. The flames had started to recede, having nothing to fuel them but marble floor. It did allow Wyatt to answer his own question though. "Oh wait... never mind. Explains a lot."

Standing in what should have been ground zero of the fire was Rubiec, the Pale Man standing happily at his side giggling like a court jester. Chris cursed under his breath.

"Smug _child,_" Rubiec narrowed his already dark eyes on Wyatt, clucking his tongue condescendingly, "I just heard the most interesting story. You aren't who you say you are..."

Slow as he could to avoid drawing attention, Chris moved closer to Wyatt, or attempted to. He was shortly cut off by a fireball at his feet.

"And _you_." Rubiec glared, "You are far more effective than I gave you credit for. I'll say that."

"Always good to be appreciated," Chris spoke dryly.

Rubiec moved in a blur, his hand around Chris throat before he could even think of moving. Didn't mean he couldn't move _after_ the fact. With the demon's unnaturally hot hand dug into his throat, claws already slightly imbedded over arteries, Chris lashed out with the athame in his hand, cutting a surprised Rubiec across the ribs before he caught Chris' hand, twisting it around until his fingers slackened and Chris dropped the weapon.

Rubiec ran a finger along the cut, the parted skin seeming to sear itself closed. Chris tried another last ditch attempt to pull free only for the demon to yank him up higher so his toes barely grazed the ground. Chris had no choice but to occupy his hands with pulling his weight up a bit so he could breathed.

"Stay there, Halliwell," Rubiec said loudly, making Wyatt stop in his tracks. The demon quirked a scarred eyebrow at him, "You know how many ways I could kill your brother right now?"

Wyatt didn't dignify that with a response, frozen in his place with a look of utter hatred burning in his expression. Rubiec watched with interest, catching the twitches in Wyatt's fingers, the shifting grip on Excalibur. All indicators that the twice blessed had no intention of staying put the minute Rubiec turned his back on him. He needed a little more convincing.

"Five ways, without even moving all that much." He spoke the number with dark pleasure, demonstrating each oh so slightly as he spoke them, "Just shift my grip a little farther and I could cut off his airways. Dig in a little deeper and cut open an artery. A little sideward motion would easily snap his neck. Decapitation, of course. Ah, but my favorite..."

Rubiec's held out his free hand demonstratively, the color of his palm shifting from its usual tan to a dull orange, to a glowing cherry red so hot that it distorted the air around it.

"Seeing as you apparently don't remember anything about this world, I'll remind you about this little power of mine. I can focus heat in my hands to any temperature I want. So imagine this..." He spoke conversationally, even as he eased his now white hot hand closer to Chris, "On your poor little brother's throat."

"_Stop it!_" Wyatt growled the order, fist clenched.

"I DON'T TAKE ORDERS FROM YOU ANYMORE!" Rubiec howled back, the force of his voice raising the temperature in the room another hair. Wyatt rocked back slightly on his heels, face pale under his tan. Wordlessly, he plunged Excalibur into the floor of the room, embedding it a few inches before dropping his hands to his sides. The usual gesture of hands up wasn't a good non-offensive posture to take in the magical world.

"Fine." Wyatt just said stiffly. "Could you just let him breathe?"

Rubiec's eyebrow raised again.

"_Please._" Wyatt bit out.

Ever so slowly, the demon lowered Chris down, not entirely on to his feet, but enough where he could support his weight on his toes. Chris couldn't help but bring in a gulp of air and mumble out a jagged curse. Rubiec's scarred face stretched into a grotesque smile, "Here's how this is going to go. My short, annoying friend over there explained how this works. We just have to sit and stay until the time runs out and this world is stuck, and you two are going to behave until it is."

"Five hours?" Chris grunted, shifting his feet so there was less pressure on his throat, "That long? We have other plans, Rubiec. If you keep us occupied, it won't help. There are other groups out there, changing things."

For a moment Rubiec looked concerned, only a moment, "Clever boy, but bluffing."

"Pardon me!" The Pale Man broke in politely, completely unperturbed by the whole show. He looked down around his feet at the sigil and back up, "I think I can fix that, either way. This sigil, I can use it to focus a spell."

Chris cursed inwardly. Now the bastard decided to start making sense.

"What spell?" Rubiec growled unamused by his new friend.

"Every timeline has a pivot point, something you need to change to shift it one way or another. Killing those who should be dead, changing environments, shifting people from good to evil. All things they are no doubt doing as we speak." The Pale Man shrugged, "With a sigil of this power, I can simply focus them into one person or object. Then the only way they could change things is if they destroyed or killed that focus, effectively foiling whatever plans they have."

Rubiec frowned, squeezing tighter on Chris's neck as a pastime, streams of blood snaking down into the collar of his shirt. Wyatt cursed harshly and was completely ignored, "Sounds risky..."

The world chose that moment to shudder and shift. The sigil room around them turning into a parking lot in the middle of a business district, city lit up as the late night activities started. Then, quick as it came, it shifted back, dropping them back into the sigil room.

"What was _that_..." Rubiec asked even though he already knew the answer.

"They changed something," The pale man supplied tensely, "They're getting closer."

Chris and Wyatt caught each other's eye, both knowing exactly what changed but not wanting to give it away. They both could feel it. The overworld... it was open again. Leo had succeeded.

"Another change and this time is lost..." Warned the Pale Man.

Rubiec didn't deliberate it for long, face unreadable until a sick smile took over, "Do your spell, and use me as the focus..."

**7:15**

Bianca huddled against the balcony's ledge, fingers wrapped around the bannister so hard she didn't have any feeling in them anymore. So many things had gone wrong, but never an opportunity to jump in without wasting her advantage. She watched the scene, face as emotionless as she could get it, trying to clear her head to think through this. She needed a distraction, a major distraction.

Then the shift came, and with it, an idea...

Reluctantly she pulled her hands off the bannister and stepped back out of sight far enough that she could shimmer out into a different room, just far enough away that no one could hear her. If the shift had happened it must mean that Leo had succeeded, so hopefully this would work.

"Leo!" She called to the ceiling awkwardly, never attempting to call for an Elder before, "If you can hear me. We're in trouble."

It didn't even take half a second for the orbs to show up in front of her... and he wasn't alone.

**7:15**

"It's a simple spell, just need a bit of blood," The Pale Man hefted a giant needle, waving it around above Rubiec's hand before committing and jabbing it in, the blood bubbled and boiled as it poured out, the man barely catching it in the bowl he'd found. "There." He smiled, completely oblivious to the look of extreme distaste Rubiec had centered on him, and tottered back to the center of the room. Without the barest hint of irony, he placed the bowl right on top of their original target.

He then shut his eyes and proceeded to focus, chanting the spell and rewrapping the spellwork in the sigil. Chris could only watch, not knowing if there was even a point to breaking the sigil anymore if the original spell was so changed. He had no choice, they could only watch.

Rubiec just continued to keep that jagged excuse for a smile on his face. Chris was getting very, very tired of it. The repetitive loss of oxygen was making him considerably weak and actually fairly giddy as well. It was all he could do to just keep a good head on his shoulders and that demon kept smiling at him like that. Hell, he looked like a particularly curious pitbull who had mistakenly spotted something shiny at the bottom of a meat grinder and decided to investigate... with his face. It wasn't pleasant to look at, and if he was going to die, this was not the last thing he wanted to see. Not to mention the blood which was now liberally streaming out of his neck, trickling its way down his spine.

"Do you want to know why I chose myself?" Rubiec asked the two of them. Wyatt returned with a face that was too pissed to bother talking. Chris, on the other hand...

"Who cares..." Chris scoffed lightly, rolling his eyes. Rubiec turned angry eyes on him in a flash and Chris met them with the lack of fear being nearly delirious brings you. "What princess, you want a cookie for volunteering?"

"I always hated you," Rubiec responded darkly, "Doesn't surprise me that traitorous Phoenix liked you so much. You are both so adept at betraying your own blood."

"I never betrayed Wyatt," Chris's eyes lit with utter conviction, "Never will."

Rubiec's face twisted in distaste, "I could kill you so easily, it would make this all so much simpler..."

Wyatt stepped forward slightly, "Don't you _dare._"

"But you haven't. Wonder why..." Chris glanced at his brother and smiled slightly, "Ah, you're scared of Wyatt still. I die, you have nothing to protect you..."

_"Chris..."_ Wyatt hissed just low enough Chris could only hear it through his whitelighter senses. _"Would you stop poking the crazy bear? He's going to KILL __you__."_

The color of Rubiec's hand started to change, brightening. Chris didn't care. he knew he was right. Unlike Wyatt, he knew Rubiec's story by heart. He was still slightly giddy, and the added pressure on his neck now wasn't helping, but he wasn't doing this blind. He had a feeling there was information to be had and any advantage now was worth getting a little burnt for.

"Still being controlled, aren't you?" Chris managed to get out, "Like always. Someone always _owns you._"

The heat on his neck flared up for a moment and Chris grit his teeth against the pain. Chris let the pain hiss out between his teeth in a breath, noting that the heat has most likely cauterized the cuts on his neck... Silver lining and all that. He sent a sharp look over to Wyatt, warning him back. He had advanced another couple steps without Rubiec noticing.

"No one owns me..." Rubiec growled. "He can't kill me. That's the brilliance of this. There's only two ways to kill me. He doesn't remember the spell anymore and he wouldn't _dare_ use the other option."

"The black flame," Chris returned, not surprised.

The black flame was one of the most powerful and most darkly demonic powers to ever grace demon bloodlines. This power's other name was The Corruption. Mostly because it had a similar defense mechanism to Excalibur, it tended to twist the person wielding it if it wasn't the intended master, and the intended master of the Black Flame was always old and always demonic. Even when Wyatt had been evil, he'd barely used it because of that. Ever time he did, it stole another piece of him.

It was Chris's leading theory on what turned Wyatt for a long time, but he could never find out where it came from. It still had lingered in the back of his mind when he'd traveled back into the past anyway, burning through a few demonic contacts just making sure the power wasn't anywhere near enough to get to Wyatt... now, knowing what he did, that Wyatt was taken into the underworld by Gideon. He wasn't so sure it was out of the question.

As a kid, Wyatt could have very well have orbed to the deepest parts of the Underworld, trying to find his way out, what if he tripped over something... It was the one thing Wyatt very carefully didn't gloat about. What if it stayed dormant, what if he didn't need to use it until something traumatic happened. Like, for instance, his mother dying...

"Son of a bitch..." Chris whispered.

"What?" Rubiec growled.

Chris just rolled his eyes, "Not you. I just figured something out."

Rubiec's grip tightened, "Do not play with me, boy."

"Fine," Chris grunted against the tight grip and then quickly looked over to the left. Rubiec followed his gaze sharply.

Of course, Wyatt then attacked from the right.

In near perfect synchronization, Chris planted his foot in Rubiec's stomach, shoving him back onto Excalibur with a vengeance. He orbed in place only long enough for Wyatt to haul the demon back and away, freeing Chris from his grip.

Back on the flat of his feet for the first time in a while, Chris was actually surprised he stayed upright, but he knew it was mostly adrenaline. It wouldn't last much longer.

"Wyatt!" Chris called, "keep scarface distracted. We can _not_ let this spell go through."

"No arguments here!" Wyatt grumbled, dodging a face full of white hot claws as Rubiec twisted off of Excalibur like he hadn't just been stabbed through the chest. Wyatt hadn't exactly been expecting the demon to be disabled by that injury but he had expected it to at least slow him down. Barely capable of defending the lightning fast attacks, Wyatt decided it was smarter not to hope for _anything_ slowing this guy down in the future.

He didn't have to worry about it for long though, He just had to keep the enraged fire demon out of Chris's way long enough for him to get to the most obnoxious example of a warlock they had ever run across and punch him in the face. At least Wyatt assumed that's what the plan was. That's all _he_ wanted to do at this point.

Rubiec made an attempt to dodge around him only to be rudely interrupted by Excalibur taking a chunk out around his rib cage again, blood hissing and bubbling around the wound for a second before the hole closed up and he was good as new.

"That's getting really annoying..." Wyatt growled.

"Well then," Rubiec's eyes gleamed, "Try this." Then he proceeded to explode.

The shock wave removed Wyatt entirely off the floor, sending him flying back. His reunion with gravity was a little more violent, making him land harshly on his shoulder, Excalibur jolting out of his hand. Chris had enough warning to hit the floor early, avoiding the brunt of the fire, but it still sent him skidding across the marble a good fifteen feet in the wrong direction.

"Ow." Wyatt commented bluntly, fingers clamped over his injured shoulder which seemed to be aligned in a rather awkward way. Chris could only grunt in agreement, too busy trying to convince the world to stop spinning. The Pale Man continued to chatter his spell away, the bowl in front of him glowing and spinning like a top. Rubiec, if anything, looked healthier than ever, cracking his knuckles and heading towards Wyatt.

"When this is all over," The Demon said darkly, "The Great Lord Wyatt is going to have a tragic accident. Something poetic of course, ah right, he was killed by his own deranged kid brother. Shame. Being the great asset that I am, I will of course avenge his death by killing the murderer and run this world in your stead." Rubiec smiled, "You're welcome."

Wyatt popped his shoulder back into alignment, managing to contain most of the grunt of pain behind his teeth, attempting to get himself back in fighting shape before the demon reached him. Wyatt looked up again to gauge how long he had and was treated to the most satisfying sight: Rubiec getting blasted in the face with Elder lightning.

"Dad!" Wyatt didn't waste the advantage, quickly healing himself and calling Excalibur to him. Only after that did he take the time to digest the image of his father, but twenty years younger. Yeah, that was kind of weird. Then there was the fact that he wasn't alone.

Another Elder, tall, brown hair, looking a little ruffled and a lot out of place. His being there wasn't the weirdest thing, it was the fact that both Chris and the Pale Man were looking at him like he was the source himself. His appearance seemed to startle the Warlock enough that he'd stopped saying the spell, the bowl spinning impatiently, waiting for him to complete it.

"Father," The words were barely audible, but unmistakably tinged with hatred and surprise. The man looked like he'd been punched in the gut. The whole thing would have been right out of some drama if it wasn't so incredibly awkward. Wyatt fumbled up and over to Chris as he struggled to his feet. Chris barely acknowledged him, too busy glaring daggers at the Elder.

The Elder himself was stiff, like he didn't quite know what to do with himself. The word the Pale Man had spoken seemed to have frozen him in place. Then, he spoke.

"You are no son of mine."

For half an instant, Wyatt felt bad for him. Good thing that feeling was gone by the time Bianca shimmered in behind the Man and stuck a glowing hand in his back. Her appearance broke the seeming slow motion the area had taken. Both the Elder and Chris snapped back to themselves and back to task. The fireball that shot between them certainly helped as well.

Chris shook his head sharply, absorbing the pain from every burn and bruise to bring himself back to task. Leo was holding his own for the moment, but he wouldn't last that much longer. Wyatt followed his line of sight and deduced the same thing, wordlessly moving away to give Leo a break. Chris just circled around next to Bianca. The most dangerous part about this power was that she was completely vulnerable while she was using it, and the bigger the power, the longer she had to stay there.

Chris kept half of his attention glued to Gideon, not trusting the man an inch. Even if he didn't overtly hate him, he didn't even know how to estimate his reactions, especially now, with him dumbly staring as his own kid got drained of every drop of magic he possessed. He stood slack, not interested in any input in the situation, good or bad, completely passive. For some reason that absolutely infuriated him.

"How are you even alive..." Chris asked darkly, trying to keep himself from crushing the man's heart where he stood, if he had one, that is.

Gideon turned to look at him slowly, losing some of the complete passivity, "What do you mean?"

"Don't play dumb." Chris scoffed, "After what you did, I figured Wyatt would have killed you first."

The Elder remained still for a moment, eyes flickering back and forth in decision, then he just shrugged, "He never knew. I made certain of that."

It was getting extremely hard to contain himself.

"I should have been more thorough." Gideon lamented. "I could have stopped this. Next time..."

Chris lunged at him, twisting his hands in the collar of his robes with a strength brought on by pure rage. "There won't be a next time, got it?"

"How do you know that?" Gideon wheezed as the fabric cut into his windpipe. "There will always be a next time as long as no one learns that humans can not handle the powers they are given. They should not be trusted with it."

Chris tightened the cloth, cutting off whatever inane thing Gideon was about to say. He could feel Bianca's gaze on his back but he ignored it. He was doing this man a favor. If he let him talk anymore, he wouldn't be alive for much longer either. The motion twisted his wrist out enough that Gideon caught sight of the silver triquetra, still knotted around his wrist, dangling innocently.

Gideon lurched in Chris's grip. "No!" He managed to get out, he twisted, getting enough air for another go, "Not again. When will she _learn?"_ Chris was suddenly able to see the resemblance from father to son, it was all in the manic gleam of the eyes.

"She?" Chris caught onto the word, curiously, the picture of a blonde girl sitting at a wicker sun room table coming to mind. Gideon's eyes hardened and he shut his mouth, refusing to speak further. By pure coincidence, the noise of fighting died down enough that it allowed them to hear a slight whisper. A whisper that sounded curiously like the end of a spell.

Chris dropped Gideon abruptly and turned back to look at the pale man as he fought the paralysis brought on by the power drain and eeked out the last words of the spell.

The room lit up with a white light like a flashbulb from hell, and immediately darkened, leaving a bright afterimage in everyone's eyes and a completely idiotic feeling in Chris's stomach. He shouldn't have waited. Why didn't he just destroy the sigil? Sure it might not have worked anymore but he should have _tried..._ Now? They were stuck...

Blinking away the spots in his eyes, Chris caught Bianca slowly pulling her hand away as the last bits of magic were pulled out of the man. He was smiling regardless, laughing under his breath. Chris just clenched his fists and glared.

The fighting had stopped on the other side of the room, a breathless Leo and Wyatt standing on either side of a now fearless Rubiec.

"I think that means the spell was completed." Rubiec commented, grinning, "and unless the Twice Blessed wants to tap into the black flame, in turn falling right back into the corruption and making this whole exercise a moot point... you're stuck here, with me."

Wyatt shot forward a step angrily, only stopping because Leo caught him, holding him back. Leo might not have been around for the original doom and gloom speech, but he knew what the black flame was, and he knew what it would mean. He wasn't going to let that happen again.

"Congratulations, though, Christopher." Rubiec hissed out the words, "You _almost_ did something useful."

Chris didn't even bother looking at him, he was too busy trying to not contemplate being locked back in this hell timeline for the rest of his life, and locking everyone else in it with him. He couldn't meet any of them in the eye, so instead, he looked over at Gideon... and what he saw there surprised him.

The Elder didn't seem to care about their current situation, he was too busy staring at Chris with utter fear and hatred in his eyes. Chris stared right back, tilting his head slightly. What was he so scared of. What? the time powers? Sure, he had the _capacity_ to steal them, but the power itself was gone. Bianca had taken every ounce of it the man had. There was nothing to transfer anymore... right?

Chris shifted quickly to look at the Pale Man, lying on his side, not having even considered standing up. He was too busy giggling at the floor.

"Chris," Bianca whispered, trying to pull him from whatever trance she assumed he was in. He didn't respond, he just slowly held his hand up and looked at the innocent chunk of metal still hanging there... glowing.

"You don't know. Don't know. Don't know." The man chanted between giggles.

"Don't know _what_?" Chris shot back irritably, hoping the hysteria in his voice wasn't as apparent outwardly as it was in his head.

The man rolled over, flopping his arm out at his sides like he was intending on making snow angels. "She lied to you."

Then, with the sudden silence and disorientation one feels when they do a cannonball into a body of water, the room shifted and stopped. The room had changed. It was the same sigil room, it was just empty, and clean. No scorch marks, no blood, no people. He was alone, standing in the middle. The feeling the room gave off was familiar though. It was that same, artificial stillness he'd felt when he'd woken up in that fake Manor.

Chris straightened his posture, fingers balled into fists, trying to look as imposing as he could with as battle worn as he was. He knew who was coming, and he had some questions for her.

Sure enough, the click of heels marked her entrance. She wasn't a child anymore. She was now closer to his mother's age, hair down to the back of her knees, arm looped in Clarence's like a pair practicing for a wedding. She smiled serenely at him, giving him a regal nod as she got closer. Clarence, though, seemed to be reading Chris's temper a lot easier, and was wearing an expression that was more close to one you would have if you were walking up to an unfamiliar dog with an unfortunate mouth foam problem.

"Hello again, Chris." The Source said cheerfully.

"Cut the bullshit." He shot back, "You have sixty seconds to explain to me why I shouldn't just jump off the deep end right now and go darkside."

The Source paused, having the sense to look slightly ashamed. "I _had_ to lie. It had to be your choice. You had to choose to accept the powers."

Chris sighed angrily, pressing his hands to his eyes to try to block out the light of the room. He knew it. Somehow he did.

"The whole thing about transferring the powers. That's impossible, isn't it." Chris said dully, dropping his hands to his sides with a slap.

The Source pinched her lips together and nodded, looking for a moment like that little girl he'd almost made cry. Chris didn't find himself caring this time, "You've always had the powers Chris. You always will."

"Then what the hell is the deal with the jewelry?" Chris, motioned angrily, "There are less vindictive ways to give a guy a friendship bracelet."

She shook her head, "It's... there's got to be a better word for this..." Clarence put a calming hand on her shoulder

"It's essentially a collar for your powers." He spoke in those tones that could domesticate a rabid tiger.

"You _collared_ me? _Seriously_?" Chris gaped, Clarence just responded with a calming hand motion, begging for another second's attention.

"Chronokinesis tends to manifest in certain individuals in a time of great need. We wanted to make sure you only started using the powers when you fully knew the meaning of having them. We hoped you'd find a way out of this paradox without resorting to these powers so you could learn how to use them at a less... stressful time." Understatement, but he continued anyway.

"The first time, after Gideon's son showed signs of breaking. Gideon forced the collar on him. He fought it, of course, and it just made things so much worse. It accelerated the problem. We presented it to you in a way where you wouldn't fight its presence, for now."

Chris closed his eyes for a moment, marshaling his calm. He opened them again, pulling his wrist up to look at the tangled black cord binding the thing to him. He thought back, head tilted. The moments of predicting what the Pale Man was going to do, the lack of effect his powers had on him, hell, the creepy internal clock. Chris should have known, and maybe he did, deep down.

"Gideon tried to kill you," The rapidly aging woman commented softly.

"He _did_ kill me." Chris responded matter-of-factly, some of the anger already gone.

The source smiled slightly and shook her head, "I mean for good. He knew you were the child of a witch and an Elder. He had experienced what that might mean first hand. The athame he stabbed you with wasn't just blessed to make you unable to heal. It was blessed to kill you at birth, to kill your _soul_."

Chris frowned, remembering the stories he'd occasionally hear about he complications at his birth, how no one thought he'd make it, and maybe not even Piper.

"We saved you, Chris." She nearly whispered it. It wasn't her bragging, it wasn't her asking for gratitude, it was something more. Chris stared at her, confused.

"You saw how this power corrupts. You saw what it did. It could happen again." Chris said slowly, "You had the ability to make sure I didn't get the opportunity to turn into another raging psychopath, and yet you went out of your way to save me... why?"

The Source stared right back at him, for that moment looking as wise and powerful as Chris would have assumed she'd be. "When you saw your brother in the past, nearly defenseless, easily killed. You knew the terror he wold become, all the people he'd kill... all you had to do was slip a bit of poison into a bottle. Why didn't you kill him?"

Chris grit his teeth against he very idea of it, "There was a chance he was good. I couldn't take that away from him."

The Source tilted her head slowly, telling him he'd answered his own question. "Back in the beginning, the other source and I had a decision on what to do with all the power we had. He chose to keep his powers to himself, controlling a select few and allowing them access to them. They, of course being demons, started betraying each other, stealing the powers from one another, distributing them." She rolled her eyes slightly, as if this was a thing she still thought unimaginably stupid. "I made the other choice. I gave all my powers away to humans. He thought I was an idiot to do it. He thought that humans couldn't handle the responsibility, couldn't follow the law of no personal gain by nature. He told me he could easily corrupt them, and he did sometimes. I still gave the powers away. I trust humans, I can see the good even in those who others can't."

For some reason Chris felt a little cowed by that statement. It was also the first time he really didn't have a problem looking at her and believing she was what she claimed to be, and what she wanted _him _to be...

"No, I'm not the person you want for this." He shook his head forcefully, shying back a step, "I'm not that good. _Wyatt_ is that good. I'm a lying manipulative asshole. I've _killed_ a person. I can't _be_ this."

Clarence shook his head, "Valkyries are naturally occurring entities. Death is only temporary for them. You know that."

Chris glared, "Doesn't mean I didn't kill her. You guys are seriously desperate if I'm the best you can find."

"Christopher!" The Source called sharply with a tone Piper would be proud of, affectionate but unmistakably firm, "You _are_ the best I have seen in a very long time. Sure, Wyatt is good, he is, but that makes him all the easier to corrupt. You, Chris, you're resolute. Stubborn. You spent a decade walking that knife's edge without falling into the dark when anyone and everyone else did."

The Witchlighter shook his head firmly, swallowing thickly, "I would have broken eventually. I was so close..."

The Source stepped up, carefully laying a hand on his arm as if she expected him to jump away, "This time? If you feel close to breaking? You have your family there to put you together again. It's not the same. If there's anyone, in any time, on any plane of existence who could handle this power... it's you. Believe me, I've looked."

Chris could only just stare at her, disbelieving, "But, what if I _can't_."

The woman squared a tender smile at him and gently reached out to pull the necklace wrapped wrist towards her, "This is a power that can't be given or taken away... but if it makes you feel better we can make a contract. You keep this with you, if you get out of control, it'll tap into your powers and take you to a plane of existence where you can harm no one." She untangled the leather cord from his wrist and straightened it out before laying it back into his palm, voice firm and fair, "I doubt you'll need it."

Chris shifted his palm, watching the light catch off the triquetra, the symbol of his family and everything they'd ever stood for. A million what ifs threaded through is existence, a million scenarios where he could break. How that would effect his family, Mel, Wyatt, Bianca...

"This is your choice, Chris." Clarence added. "This won't make life easier. People will be scared of you. The Elders won't know how to handle you... I didn't originally hold the Source's faith in you either, but I do now. You can do _good_ with this if you let yourself..."

He clamped his hand down on the pendent so hard it hurt, eyes dropping closed. All those years he had been jealous of Wyatt and all the powers he had. How he'd wished he'd get some badass power one of these days to knock Wyatt's ego down a peg or two. All of a sudden he didn't want it. There was nothing else he wanted to avoid _more_... but he knew he had to anyway.

"Man, this is a _bad_ idea..." Chris sighed and quickly shook the necklace out and latched it around the back of his neck before he could think better. "Okay, would either of you know how to kill an unkillable fire demon?"

"That, you're going to have to figure out yourself." The Source said cheerfully, smile bright, "I will give you a hint though. These meeting places? I sort of, _borrowed_ your power to make these. It's an area outside of space and time, bent to look like any place that's required."

Chris sent her a look of mock accusation, "You borrowed my power without asking?"

"Hey!" She swatted him lightly on the arm, "I gave all my powers away, don't be ungrateful." He shrugged off the slap, even though she'd managed to unknowingly hit him on one of the many burns on his arms. Clarence noticed, however, and was smiling behind a well placed hand.

"I take it you guys won't be hanging around to help, then." Chris sighed.

Clarence shook his head somberly, "I like you, kid, I really do, but the rules state clearly what I can and can't help with." The Source dug an elbow into his side and waggled her eyebrows conspiratorially. Clarence smiled slyly, "There's no rules about me dropping by for some of your mother's food, though, if you ever feel like having a chat, that is."

Chris laughed despite himself, and rolled his eyes.

"As for me? Well, I have another couple hours before I hit my hundredth birthday, shuffle off this mortal coil, and onto my usual cozy corner of existence." She grinned sharply, "I think I might make use of that time..."

"Yeah, whatever chaos you're planning, keep it away from me." Chris stepped back a few feet and looked around the room, "Now... how do I get out of here."

"You know how," Clarence assured him, "See ya, kid."

Chris closed his eyes and reached for that something that had always been there buried so deep down he hadn't noticed. Then the world shifted, he didn't even have to be looking to know. The sound, the smell, it was all different, and when he opened his eyes, the smirk on his face probably scared the tar right out of Gideon.

"No..." The Elder mumbled.

Chris's smirk widened, "Yes." Then he hauled back and punched him, right square in the nose. Gideon reeled and hit the floor, groaning as blood drained down his face. Chris stood over him, waving the feeling back into his hand, "_That_, Gideon, was for being such a stand up guy. Oh, and trying to kill me _twice_. Asshole."

Bianca's look was priceless, somewhere between pride and confusion, he took the time to give her a reassuring signal before stepping over the crumpled Elder and up to a smug looking Rubiec. He stopped a bare foot in front of the demon, close enough to make the self assured demon waver for a second.

"What could you possibly think you could do, Halliwell?" Rubiec droned.

Chris shrugged, "I'm going to leave, and you're coming with me." Not giving the demon the chance to come back with anything cohesive, Chris clamped a hand down on his arm and disappeared. No orbs required.

When he and Rubiec reappeared, they were in the middle of the underworld, the only icy patch of underworld in fact. Rubiec's eyes widened.

"That's right, Rube," Chris sing songed, "Remember this place? I know the story. You got locked up here getting frost bite for millennia. This isn't _exactly_ where you remembered though. This is just a reproduction."

Rubiec thrashed, lunging for Chris. He simply smiled, and took one step back, the icy cliff they were standing on crumbled in front of him, the torrent of rocks and ice carrying Rubiec down to the center of the pit, walls too slick with ice to climb.

Casually, Chris leaned over the edge and looked down at him, "Did I mention I control this place? See, this is a pocket away from space and time. Do you know what that means?" He mocked waiting for a response but the demon was too incensed with rage that he couldn't form a complete sentence anyway, "You're not part of the timeline anymore, Rube. For all intents and purposes, that means you're _dead. _Spell broken. You should consider yourself lucky though. You might very well be the first and last person I ever use these powers on. Consider yourself special._"_ The fake cheerfulness melted off of Chris's face as the reality of his situation dawned on Rubiec. "No one messes with my family. Ever. Enjoy eternity."

Then, once again, he disappeared, leaving nothing but the cold, the dark, and the wind to keep the demon company...

Chris smiled inwardly as he felt things shift. It was time to go home.

A/N: Well yeah. One shorter epilogue and this baby is wrapped. That one will take considerably less time to come out, and then... I've decided the sequel is inevitable as it won't leave me alone. More exploration of the Phoenix and how they feel about Bianca jumping ship. The family gets a new whitelighter who is just a little too eager about his job. Dealing with crazy past life memories. The importance of the no personal gain rule. Oh, and murders, of course.

Thank you all so much for sticking around with me. It's been a blast.


	18. Epilogue: Happy Birthday

**Disclaimer: Blah blah. Not mine!**

**Epilogue: Happy Birthday**

**November 16th, 2027. 3:16 am.**

Chris didn't really know how to describe the sensation of time shifting at first. When he had only been a passive observer of it, it was more like a solid tug and push. As if you'd just been in a slight fender bender, a little jostled, but altogether no worse for the experience. It was something that could be brushed off in a matter of moments.

When he was in control of it though... it was something entirely different.

The only comparison he could think of was the short drop between when the gallows's floor dropped out from under you and the snap of the noose halting the fall. Everything between those seconds was a free fall of instinct and adrenaline.

"What did you _do?_" The voice echoed above him, only then reminding Chris that he should open his eyes. The whiteness blinded him for a moment, leaving him only to cling on the sensation of smooth marble under his fingertips and the aching feeling of having recently hit the floor with his knees. If he didn't know better, he'd think that he was in the sigil room still, but the thing was he _did_ know better.

Without even opening his eyes he knew where and _when_ he was. That realization, that little peek into his powers, gave him enough of an adrenaline rush on top of his already rattled nerves that his muscles decided it was quitting time for the moment. He fell forward the rest of the way onto the floor, managing to catch himself on his forearms.

The owner of the voice allowed him a moment to take a breath, although Chris could tell he was getting impatient. The witchlighter let him, taking his time collecting himself, pulling his senses back close and willing the absolute _rush_ of his new power to fade away. Only then did he open his eyes.

Brushing gently against the floor in front of Chris's face was the triquetra, glinting with a silent warning even in the low light. Chris smiled internally, not wanting to give the people around him the impression that he was mocking them, just himself. He inched up so that he was sitting uncomfortably on his knees, then, slowly, he made it to his feet. Every scratch, ache, and burn from the earlier fight protesting as he did so.

Then he turned his attention to the people in front of him. Elders. Gold robed and sour faced.

"I did what I had to." Chris finally answered, meeting the closest one's gaze.

His frown was beginning to curl back in on itself, he was so displeased, "You changed time. Again."

"Hey," Chris shrugged in a tired challenge, "If you liked being dead in that scorch mark of a timeline, feel free to get all your Elder powers in a row and change it back."

The Elder merely narrowed his eyes at him, but obviously didn't make a move to do what Chris suggested. "We sensed others with you, what did you do with them?"

"My _family_ is back where they should be. Sleeping. It's three in the morning after all." Chris paused, eyes flicking to the side, "Three sixteen to be exact." The elders did not enjoy his joke, apparently. Chris just rolled his eyes and continued on to what they really wanted to know, "Time was already shifting back, I wanted it to be stable, so I just... nudged it back to the last point in time on this day where it was. The minute before the other Chronokinetic arrived."

It was 3:16 am. November 16th 2027. Everything was reset like a computer jumping back to his last known good configuration. The thing was, exactly like a computer, it didn't forget what had happened to it that easily.

"Anyone directly involved will remember as soon as they wake up. Others in the magical community might remember parts, I don't know. That's not one of my powers." Chris's voice flattened at the end of this. He wished it was, he really did. If he could have wiped the whole thing out of his family's minds and spared them having to think about it... he would have in a heart beat. The Elder could tell that, Chris knew, but he didn't say anything about it.

"...and the other?" He did say slowly, almost scared.

"Lost." Chris answered, "I left him in that timeline before it disappeared. He's not a threat anymore..."

But I may be... the unspoken end to that sentence echoed in everyone's minds. It didn't bear actually being said out loud. Chris shifted his feet slightly, making sure of his own balance. He didn't know what he'd do if the Elders took exception to his existence. He almost couldn't blame them, but the urge to survive wasn't something he could just turn off.

The Elder advanced a half step, mouth opening... The voice that echoed around the halls of the Overworld was not his, however.

"Stop it already," The bright room became almost impossibly brighter for half a second, momentarily blinding the occupants until a form came into shape. The Source stood between the Elders and Chris, semi transparent, but obviously her. She'd aged again, now an old woman.

The Elders could only stand stunned as she turned her head regally, a halting finger held out to them.

"My time is short and this trip is taxing, but if it strikes me dead, we _will_ learn from history this day," The Source said sternly, "We have all made mistakes. We will not repeat them. Christopher accepted this power with full knowledge of what it entails and, knowing that, willfully entered into a contract with me. You will curb your thoughts _this instant_."

The Elders seemed almost cowed for a moment, the majority of them staring openly. "Lady," the front most Elder started clumsily, "You must realize the danger. This much power in one time, in one family."

"Saturation of power means nothing. It's the content of those who keep it. Besides, it's not unnatural for this to happen," The Source shrugged, "Every Arthur needs his Merlin, Elder."

The Elder fell into silence, obviously seeing no point in arguing. His gaze only flickered momentarily from the Source over to Chris before he nodded.

"Good? Good." The Source nodded and patted the Elder on the shoulder as if he was a small child, "Now would someone please heal Christopher before he bleeds all over the floor."

**November 16th, 2027. 6:00 pm.**

There were only five steps up to that door, but they were perhaps the most intimidating steps Bianca had ever taken. The stained glass door stared at her like a challenge, and really, she had never been one to turn down a challenge before. It barely took two knocks before the door opened, revealing Piper Halliwell in the door frame.

"Hi," Bianca started softly, clipping her thumbs into the back pockets of her jeans.

Piper leaned against the door, expression nearly unreadable besides the slight quirk to a scarred eyebrow. "Bianca. Chris isn't here right now."

"I know," The Phoenix shook her head, looking up at the legendary witch before her and half expecting to get vanquished on the spot, "I was actually hoping to talk to you."

She didn't know what she particularly expected, but the unguarded and slightly pleased smile that came to Piper's lips wasn't it. The Halliwell stepped back from the door, pulling it open enough for Bianca to follow in. Bianca traced her steps all the way back into the kitchen, a handful of pots and pans all emitting the most wonderful smells she could remember in a _long_ time. It was enough that she couldn't stop the small wow that escaped under her breath.

Piper smiled again, going back to chopping a pile of vegetables on the counter, "Thank you. The kids have all gotten so used to my cooking these days I rarely get that reaction anymore. Do you know how to cook?"

"A little," Bianca admitted, peering curiously into a pot full of boiling potatoes, "Enough to make potions, at least. I mostly grew up on Hamburger Helper, my mom was always too busy. My dad though," Bianca smiled at the memory, "the smells that came out of the kitchen when he was around, it was _heaven._"

Piper's chopping hesitated only a moment. She'd seen Bianca as a child, and there had been a distinct lack of father. "...what happened to him?"

Bianca shrugged lightly, helpfully stirring a pot that was boiling a little too close to the edge, carefully not looking at the older witch, "My mom met him in Spain. We lived there for a while, but when she had to move back, he didn't come with us."

"He found out about the magic." Piper didn't really wonder, she just sort of knew. Bianca nodded, still watching the food instead of looking over at her. Neither really had to say anything more on the subject. They both knew how it felt. "...how is your mother?"

"Not dead." Bianca laughed without much humor, it was mostly just a stress relief. The shock of waking up in her own bed in the morning had been intense, and had only been compounded by her mother shimmering in, trying to figure out why she remembered being killed. Bianca had hugged her so hard that the blonde witch had barely been able to breathe.

They'd spent the next hour or so exchanging information, Lynn being weirdly the least surprised about the fact that Chris was involved. To the point where she commented that she "had wondered when he was going to show up again." She'd taken the whole thing extremely well...

"And your family?" Piper asked again, cooking merely on reflex now, barely looking at her work.

"They remember," Bianca started, looking over at Piper, "My mother is speaking with them now. They're... grateful, I think, but they don't know how to handle the situation. They'll come up with a decision soon, until then, I've been stricken."

Piper frowned a little at that, slightly offended on her own _and_ Bianca's behalf, "Stricken as in, kicked out of your family? That's..."

"I was expecting it," Bianca shrugged, smiling at her response, "This is actually better than I imagined it was going to be. I'd actually rented an apartment out here for when they kicked me out of the family owned one."

"Seems harsh," Piper mumbled, adding vigor to her vegetable chopping in order to stop herself from saying more potentially insulting things.

"It's worth it."

The two of them shared a spare moment of companionable silence, each automatically attending one of the slew of pots and pans as they went until eventually each thing finished, one by one.

"Could you grab those plates? We need to get this place set up before the rest of the family gets here and turns the house into a zoo." Piper asked easily, brushing past Bianca and laying a comforting hand on her shoulder, "Don't worry. It will seem intimidating at first, but you'll get used to it. Just wait until Christmas. Woo! That's always an apocalypse and a half..."

Bianca smiled at the offhand invitation, accepting the task given to her and, with it, acknowledging the hidden message the Matriarch had knowingly slipped in.

"I look forward to it."

**November 16th, 2027. 8:00 pm.**

"Best. Spot. Ever." Melinda stretched her fingers up to reach at the stars above them before letting her arms drop back to hit her two brothers where they were stretched out on either side of her. It would probably be the weirdest sight ever if someone managed to get a look up on top of the Golden Gate Bridge. The three of them, lying side by side on one of the massive girders at the top, feet dangling easily over the traffic.

"Thought you were scared of heights," Wyatt poked her in the arm, forcing her to tuck it closer in to her own side.

"I got over that when I was eight," Mel said proudly, before switching to sarcasm, "Thanks for keeping track. I see how much you love me now."

Chris didn't bother covering the snorted laugh though he probably should have. Mel rewarded him with a sharp elbow to the side again.

"Hey, you're in the dog house too!" She frowned.

"What?" Chris shifted out of each of her elbow, "Why?"

Mel and Wyatt managed to laugh near in unison, they both tossed each other a look and rattled off exactly why, alternating between them.

"Secret girlfriend." Mel started.

"Secret _demon flavored_ girlfriend." Wyatt emphasized.

"For two years."

"With multiple demon attacks you didn't tell us about."

"Not taking me into the evil time with you."

"Dropping us off in our beds and disappearing until noon."

"Secret awesome _time powers_."

"Stop, stop, stop." Chris rolled his eyes and held up a hand, "I get it, but you can't really be mad at me for most of those. I had no control over that." Yes, he did have a secret girlfriend, who was not a secret anymore. His siblings hadn't missed a spare second to tease him about that. The disappearing until noon thing, well... yeah, he didn't show back up at the house until then, but he just needed a moment. He figured Wyatt and Leo could explain everything to the family well enough and Bianca needed some time with her mother...

"Excuuuses," Mel carried the word out with good humor, wiggling over farther so she was back into elbow range. Soon as she was though, her face took on a more somber tone, "Chris, just... no more secrets, okay?"

Chris looked over at them, noting the utter seriousness on both of his siblings' faces. It was still there, the urge to lie, to manipulate. It was ingrained so far into him he hadn't even noticed that it was there for the majority of this lifetime. Yet he'd used it on the two people he really shouldn't have to.

"Okay." He answered seriously and turned back to look up at the stars. They joined him for a moment, Mel leaning into Wyatt's shoulder with a sigh. He let it drag on, wanting the bit of peace before he kept his promise. Only after a few minutes of small jokes, the wind making their fingers numb, did he press on.

"Since I'm being honest now, I should probably mention something."

Wyatt twisted over to frown at him, "What now?"

"I'm getting married."

Mel lurched in her spot so suddenly that Wyatt reached out to make sure she didn't flop over the edge, "No way!"

Chris shrugged nonchalantly, pushing himself to sit up, "That is if my future in-laws don't start a feud and try to kill us." He flashed a sharp smile at them and orbed out, leaving the two of them to stammer behind him.

"Why does he do that..." Wyatt whined.

"Jerk," Mel agreed, leaning forward to yell at the sky, "Happy birthday you ungrateful brat!"

**AN:**

Yet again. Thank you all for sticking with me throughout this whole thing. There is going to be a lull before anything of the sequel comes out as I like to get about five chapters or so in at the start. If you're reading this far past when I last updated, please don't be shy about leaving reviews even then. It makes me smile and spurs me on.

If you guys would like to keep track of me in the meantime. You can find me here: Vylla (dot) deviantart (dot) com and here: Risahulett (dot) Blogspot (dot) com.

Until next time!


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